JCP branch helps NTT workers fight back restructuring attack

NTT Corp., Japan's telecommunication giant with 8.8 trillion yen internal
reserves, is now trying to "restructure" employees in their fifties.

The group is by no means in a financial crisis, but has run a deficit due
to losses in investments abroad, which has nothing to do with its workers.

NTT is attempting to cut its personnel by urging employees in their
fifties to retire and then be rehired by outsourcing affiliates at about 75
percent of their present wage or remain at NTT proper but be transferred to
other regions in western Japan which NTT-west serves.

In Aichi Prefecture, the Japanese Communist Party NTT branch said that
the choice is unacceptable to such employees because they are apparently
well-paid but have to pay a lot for housing and for the education of their
children. The JCP branch distributed handbills to let workers know that the
company is violating the human rights, making older workers the targets of
restructuring.

Mr. A, a deputy section chief in his early fifties with three children,
will have to suffer a loss of 3 million yen in annual income if he accepts
to be restructured. Mr. B, 52, has three children for whom he has to pay 2.6
million yen a year for their college education. For workers in their
fifties, a 25 percent reduction in income is completely unacceptable.

JCP Chair Shii Kazuo in the parliament took up the NTT restructuring
issue and demanded that the government order a stop to the plan, as it goes
against United Nations recommendations on employment. Quoting Supreme Court
judgments, Shii made clear that the worker's consent is indispensable in
order for retirement and transfer to be valid, and that the company is
acting illegally if it forces workers into quitting. This was a great
encouragement to NTT workers.

The JCP Aichi Prefectural Committee established a system of consultation
by phone, fax, and e-mail, encouraging workers' struggles to repulse the
illegal pressure on them to retire. (end)