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Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama received a UNI Global Union delegation today in Tokyo.



UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings encouraged Prime Minister Hatoyama to put jobs and decent work at the top of his economic agenda and to engage with the trade union movement at a challenging time for the Japanese economy.



The Prime Minister told Jennings, UNI Asia & Pacific Regional Secretary Christopher Ng, UNI Liaison Council of Japan Chairman Takaaki Sakurada and UNI staff members Eiichi Ito and Yoko Ogawa that he would do his best to attend UNI’s World Congress in Nagasaki, Japan in November. The Prime Minister welcomed the choice of Nagasaki as the host city of the UNI congress as well as the global union support for a nuclear-free world.



UNI will hold its congress from November 9-12, just prior to the APEC Summit that will bring heads of governments from the broad Pacific Region to Japan on November 13-14.



With the world’s union movement being in Japan just before the start of the APEC summit it is important to bring the voice of the working people to the summit, the Prime Minister said.



In a discussion with the UNI delegation on the congress theme “Breaking Through”, Hatoyama said “it is important to find a new form of capitalism that is more sustainable and to find new ways of organizing the world with new values and new thinking.”



Employment must be a high priority in those discussions, the Prime Minister said.



His comments echoed a speech he made on January 29^th on theme of protecting peoples’ lives where he said he would try to find new ways of creating employment in the Japanese economy. He said that it could not be done by relying on public works projects alone or market fundamentalism. Hatoyama called for job creation in the service sector and green jobs.



Hatoyama was elected last August in a landslide election victory that dislodged the Liberal Democratic Party from power after more than 50 years of virtually uninterrupted control of the government.



Jennings said Prime Minister Hatoyama’s historic victory is also consistent with the congress theme “Breaking Through.”



The Prime Minister told the UNI delegation of his concern about the dispatched workers system, where workers are employed in manufacturing jobs on a temporary and flexible basis without social protection. This is a huge change for Japanese workers brought up in a system of life-long employment.



“Japan has built its employment practices on life-long employment,” Jennings told the Prime Minister. “If there is a shift to a dispatching workers model there will be a negative impact on broader Japanese society. It places all the risk on the shoulders of individual workers and threatens the chance for them to have a decent job and a decent life. It is not acceptable for Japanese employers to escape their employment responsibilities.”



Jennings told Hatoyama about recent European Union employment legislation on temporary workers and the need for a strong regulatory framework to eliminate abuses and for workers to be treated fairly. The Prime Minister spoke of his employment plan to provide skills, support for job seekers and strengthen the safety net for non-regular employees. He said the UNI Global Agreement with the top 6 temporary work agencies is also providing a framework for regulation and dialogue.