Japan Press Weekly

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2014 June 25 - July 1 [LABOR]

Lawyers protest Abe’s deregulation of labor laws

Akahata learned on June 24 that 35 of 52 member associations of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations had issued statements against the Abe government’s deregulation of labor-related laws, including the Worker Dispatch Law.

The JFBA in January published a statement under the name of the president opposing the government proposed revision of the rules on the use of agency workers.

On that day, the Abe Cabinet approved a new economic growth strategy calling for the removal of working time regulations.

The new strategy plans to create a new wage payment system delinked from the number of hours worked which in effect will introduce a system of unpaid overtime. The plan states that the system will be applied to “workers earning more than 10 million yen annually.” However, there is no guarantee that the system will continue to be limited to workers whose annual income exceeds 10 million yen.

With the strategy, the government plans to promote and increase the use of a “limited regular full-time employment system” under which workers are forced to endure lower wages and face easy dismissals as their duties and worksites are limited. This could increase the numbers of unstable jobs.

Prime Minister Abe at a press conference after the Cabinet approval insisted that the strategy will help corporations improve their workers’ productivity.

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Yamashita Yoshiki on June 24 issued a statement in regard to Abe’s new basic policy on economic growth.

In the statement, Yamashita said that the new growth policy will drive more workers to death from overwork while promoting the corporate use of workers as disposable labor. He pointed out that this policy will probably cause a deterioration, not an enhancement, of human resources, the very backbone of companies.