Rengo adamantly opposes the privatization of workers' accident compensation insurance
The Council for Regulatory Reform, an advisory body to Prime Minister Koizumi, plans to study the privatization of the workers' accident compensation insurance program and then submit a final report to the Prime Minister in late December. Meanwhile, the Workers' Accident Compensation Insurance Subgroup, Labor Conditions Subcommittee, Labor Policy Council of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare compiled a written report in November reflecting the members' unanimous view of public interest, labor and management, and announced their opposition to reaching a hasty conclusion. The Subgroup called on the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare to deal with the issue appropriately, explaining that the problems that would be brought about by privatization are not clearly defined, and that this move would have a serious impact on worker protection.
The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), for its part, released a comment by the General Secretary who pointed out that members of the Council for Regulatory Reform arbitrarily excluded discussions on the pros and cons of privatization and began working on the premise that privatization was a fait accompli. He pointed out that the Council did not discuss the essential points that constitute the workers' accident compensation insurance program, or gather the views of individuals directly affected by the program, including enterprise owners, victims of accidents/injuries and their families, as well as their survivors, and adamantly opposed the privatization of the workers' accident compensation insurance program, since it would seriously violate workers' rights.
Rengo stressed the benefits of the existing workers' accident compensation insurance program as a worker protection system that was founded on the sacrifices of numerous victims of rosai (industrial injuries and accidents) incidents, enabling all the workers, if they become involved in such incidents, to be eligible for treatment, leave from work, and compensation to pay for rehabilitation programs, even if enterprise owners had not paid any premiums. It was even equipped with a pension program. In addition, Rengo cited the following concerns as their reasons for opposing the current privatization plan.
The proposed privatization is to be implemented under the same framework as automobile liability insurance programs offered by private nonlife insurance companies. There is a concern, therefore, that worker protection will suffer drastic setbacks, such as: (1) the danger that workers at sites of business having no insurance contracts may not be compensated; (2) problems in approving whether rosai, such as death from overwork, applies or not because on-the-spot inspections cannot be enforced to investigate the actual status of excessively heavy work, and because it is unclear who will establish fair approval criteria; and (3) although the proposed plan calls for the abolition of the system of paying, on behalf of enterprises, unpaid wages to workers at the time of corporate bankruptcies as the collective responsibility of the enterprise owner, this means that workers will both lose jobs because of bankruptcy and be dismissed without receiving wages owed.
Rengo also emphasized the need for reconsideration, citing the examples of other countries such as the US, where a nonlife insurance company that handled workers' accident compensation insurance went bankrupt and created serious problems in society, and New Zealand, where the system was privatized and then brought back into state ownership.
