Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2015 February 11 - 17 TOP3 [LABOR]

Panasonic makes job-transfer refusers an example to others

Electronics giant Panasonic is forcing job transfers to extremely distant locations onto workers who refused the company’s order of job changes to a foreign-owned firm, obviously as a warning to others.

Panasonic last April announced that it will split a part of its circuit component division. Three months later, it handed over the business to a new firm, called Skyworks Panasonic Filter Solutions Japan Co., Ltd., and relinquished 66% of stock ownership to the U.S.-based Skyworks Solutions Inc.

The workers who were subject to job changes to the new firm were 179 employees of a Panasonic factory in Kadoma City, the company’s main factory in Osaka. Panasonic explained to them that Skyworks will guarantee their employment for two years and will make an effort to renew contracts every five years after the 2-year period expires. Anxieties about retaining their jobs after the two years spread among the targeted workers. Finally, 36 of them decided to refuse the transfer.

Suddenly late last year, Panasonic ordered the 36 to transfer to work at distant factories in Hyogo, Fukui, and Hokkaido. All these areas are very far away - the closest is more than 100 km away from where they are and the farthest more than 1,000 km. Some of them could not accept the order due to their own health problems or family responsibilities such as caring of old parents, and children. Normally, before the company gives a transfer order, it takes individual family circumstances into consideration.

All those workers thought this to be a kind of punishment as a warning to other workers. “My mind went blank,” a worker said.

It was around that time that they saw a group of people distributing flyers outside the factory gate. The name, Denki-Joho Union (a union on good terms with Zenroren), was on the flyer. Some of them went to the union for advice. They visited there again with some other colleagues. Now, 12 workers who never dreamed of joining a union until a few months ago became union members. They said, “I was told unionists are all communists,” and “I’d just heard of the existence of a small union but I didn’t know if it actually existed.”

The 12 workers, together with the union, repeatedly hold collective bargaining sessions with Panasonic. They are requesting transfers to much closer factories so that they can commute from their homes. “In Panasonic’s history, this is unprecedented. Support for their struggle is increasing more than ever before,” exclaimed a retired Panasonic worker.

Nishino Ken’ichi, the head of the Kansai Branch of the Denki-Joho Union said, “To divide the workers and sell out both the division and workers to foreign firms has never happened at Panasonic before. This is a new type of corporate restructuring.”