Japan Press Weekly

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2014 April 16 - 22 [LABOR]

JCP calls for joint efforts against adverse revision of Worker Dispatch Law

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on April 15 at a press conference in the Diet building released an appeal calling for joint efforts to stop a government plan to abolish regulations pertaining to the use of job placement agency workers.

Shii criticized a bill to change the Worker Dispatching Law for abandoning its key principles that an employer cannot accept agency temps as alternatives to its regular employees and that the use of agency workers is limited to fixed-term or temporary jobs. The planned revision is worse than all the past revisions to the law, he stressed.

Under the current legislation, employers are allowed to use agency workers for certain categories of jobs up to three years. After the time limit expires, these companies have an obligation to offer regular-employment contracts to the workers dispatched from agencies. The bill will abolish the three-year limit to enable companies to keep using temporary placement services as long as they want to on condition that dispatched workers are changed in three years.

The bill will deprive agency temps of a chance to become regular full-time workers, and force them to keep working under unstable employment conditions, Shii pointed out.

A number of full-time workers will be replaced with workers from staffing companies if the bill is enacted, and it will lead to an overall deterioration in the working environment, including lowering of wages, he added. “The revision to the law is a severe problem for not only agency temps but also workers as a whole,” the JCP chair said.

As countermeasures, Shii proposed drastic changes in the Worker Dispatch Law to tighten regulations on the use of agency temps and creation of a rule to secure equal treatment between agency placed and regular workers.

Citing the fact that the national centers of trade unions -the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren), the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), and the National Trade Union Council (Zenrokyo)- are making a joint effort to block the adverse revision, Shii expressed his determination to strengthen cooperation in and outside the Diet to kill the bill.

Past related article
> Abe Cabinet subservient to staffing service industry [March 3, 2014]