Japan Press Weekly

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2013 July 24 - 30 [LABOR]

Young part-time worker sues coffee shop chain for refusal to renew contract

A young part-time worker filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court on July 23, seeking revocation of a coffee shop chain’s refusal to renew her three-month contract.

The plaintiff is a 29-year-old woman who worked at “Caffe Veloce” in Chiba City till June this year.

The employer had continued to renew its part-timers’ contracts every three months. However, it decided that the contract will be renewed no more than 15 times in March and imposed the new rules in June.

The plaintiff, whose contract had been renewed for more than 15 times, was then dismissed.

Under the revised Labor Contract Law, employers are obliged to offer an open-ended contract to employees who have worked for more than five years on fixed-term contracts if they so request.

At a press conference on the same day, the young worker’s lawyer Sasayama Naoto pointed out that the coffee shop chain may have refused to renew her contract in order to evade this legal obligation.

According to the plaintiff, the employer told her that if they kept the same staff for years, the shop would lose its “freshness”. “They have insulted my human dignity,” said the woman, who is a member of the Tokyo Young Contingent Workers' Union.