Japan Press Weekly

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2016 June 8 - 14 [LABOR]

Contingent workers at Tohoku Univ. fighting back against dismissal plan

Representatives of trade unions organizing contingent staff members at Tohoku University held a news conference on June 6 in the Labor Ministry office building to demand that the university authorities not dismiss fixed-term workers and change their employment contracts into open-ended ones.

Tohoku University, located in Sendai City in Miyagi Prefecture, is a hub national university in the Tohoku region which was struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami five years ago. The university plans to fire its 3,243 non-regular workers from the 2018 school year, who are currently working on up-to-five-year contracts.

As a condition for converting their fixed-term employment contracts into indefinite ones, the university requires each department to “select talented non-regular staff members who are expected to achieve better results than regular workers” and to “propose ways to secure enough financial resources to give those talented workers regular positions”.

At the press conference, union official Sato Kanji said, “Under this condition, almost all of the fixed-term employees will be dismissed. It also runs counter to the spirit of the Labor Contracts Act which calls for stabilizing employment.”

For the purpose of cutting down on personnel expenses, national universities have employed more and more contingent workers instead of regular employees. Behind this lies the fact that the government has reduced official grants for operating national universities by 12% (about 150 billion yen in total) in the past dozen years. Thus, it is almost impossible for each of the nearly 30 departments at Tohoku University to find a source of revenue to hire non-regular workers as regular employees.

The unions are scheduled to bargain collectively with the university management over this issue in late June.