Worker dismissals: Should it be legally free or regulated?

Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Sakaguchi Chikara's statement in favor
of early legislation that would make worker dismissals easier has generated
repercussions.

Sakaguchi on November 4 expressed an intention to propose in 2003
legislation which has been submitted by Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro.

The prime minister, since he came to office, has been maintaining that
"legislation on term employment and worker discharge will facilitate
corporations to hire more workers."

The health and labor ministry in September instructed its advisory
council on labor policy to study procedures to be followed and conditions to
be met in deciding the term of a labor contract and in ending contract
systems concerning working hours, such as the so-called self-set working
hours system, and a review of the category of professional workers on
limited term labor contracts and quasi-professional workers on self-set
working hours systems.

Unlike European countries, there are no laws in Japan directly regulating
worker dismissals by corporations. Only by Supreme Court judgments, four
conditions were established to make dismissals valid. For example, dismissal
is deemed valid only when the company has exhausted every effort to avoid
the dismissal and the

worker dismissal is the only way to sustain the company

Previously, business circles have been criticizing the Supreme Court's
judgments as unfair restrictions on worker dismissals. Dubbing Japan as "a
country with less freedom of dismissals," they call on the government for
legislation which will facilitate dismissals.

In the advisory council's discussions, members representing the employers
said that no new law is needed and that deregulation of dismissals should be
studied later. Members representing the employee, who are from the Japanese
Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) and trade union leaders under its
umbrella, said that court judgments on discharges should be made into law.
The two arguments have never come closer to each other.

Now, when the unemployment rate is 5.3 percent and major corporations
have plans to cut a very large number of jobs, the imminent task is to make
laws to regulate worker dismissals.

Going against this need, Fuyushiba Tetsuzo, the ruling Komei Party's
secretary general, outspokenly said, "Japan is not a free economy if we have
to regulate dismissals, as the Communist Party is calling for."

To counter these moves of the Koizumi Cabinet, the National Confederation
of Trade Unions (Zenroren) proposed to strengthen the movement in opposition
to legislation facilitating dismissals and calling for sound work rules to
be established.

Rengo President Sasamori Kiyoshi made it clear that Rengo will also
oppose the moves of the Koizumi Cabinet. (end)