Japan Press Weekly

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2013 November 13 - 19 [LABOR]

Court rules ‘Ricoh illegally sent workers to subsidiary in order to make them resign’

The Tokyo District Court on November 12 judged that the order which major electric office equipment maker Ricoh gave to two employees to relocate to a subsidiary company is void because it was an abuse of the right of personnel management.

Ricoh in June 2011 announced a plan to downsize 1,600 workers. After that, superiors of the two plaintiffs repeatedly encouraged them to resign. The two employees, who kept refusing to resign, were ordered to go to a distribution subsidiary and do unskilled labor, such as packing and labeling, though they were engineers.

The judgment points out that Ricoh planned to give external assignments to all 152 employees who declined to accept early retirement. It is clear that the company did that with the intention to force them to voluntarily leave their jobs, the court document concludes. The court, however, turned down the plaintiffs’ request for compensation.

Ricoh appealed to a higher court.