Red purge at OKI Electrical

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mass dismissals with the *Workers 'Ponr performance' heralded redundancies Taken from 'Rodo Japanese workers'.

OKI Electrical Industry Co. is one of the oldest manufacturers of electric machines in Japan and celebrated its centennial On November 1, 1981. Oki was the first in Japan to manufacture telephone systems and is now a leading telecommunication machine maker, producing telephone autoswitching eqiupment, computers, integrated circuits, etc.

Oki Electric's management, proud of being a pioneer, has long been irritated by its undistinguished business results compared with newcomers to the field such as Nippon Electric Company (NEC) and Fujitsu. Running on an operating deficit amounting to 0.4 billion yen for the financial yer 1978 (sales proceeds come to about 120 billion yen), the management in November 1978 forcibly discharged 1,350 employees, more than 10 per cent of all employees.

Oki president Miyake Yasuo, who had been invited in from the board of directors of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation in 1977, the largest user of Oki's products, engineered the Electronics: less and less jobs in sight full financial support and consent of Fuji Bank.

In enforcing the firings, the company showed the union the following list of criteria for dismissal it had drawn up:

*Workers of low efficiency;

*Frequent absentees and late comers.

with low ale;

*Workers breaking shop flow rules;

*Workers who do not cooperate with management policies;

*Workers in double harness (particularly when both husband and wife work for Oki);

*and workers to accept the personnel reshuffles and those who cannot accept transters to a new address.

The Oki Electrical Workers Union (a closed shop with about 13,000 members), which belongs to Denki Roren AlJapan Federation of Electrical Machine Workers Unions, one of the leading industrial unions in Japan), organised some formalistic and languid strikes under the guidance the company-kept executive committee. One thousand workers accepted management's exhortations to apply for retirement.

The company then enforced the dismissal of about 300 employees. Among the 300 forcibly discharged were left wing activists, working couples, women in pregnancy, etc. The dismissals constitute in substance a red purge. The mass discharge of so many full time permanent employees of a large enterprise attracted the attention of the mass media, as it was the first such incident since the mass dismissal of coal miners at the Mitsui Mining company's Miike mines in 1960.

The executive committee of the Oki union, however, accepted the forcible mass dismissal and declared that the discharged workers were formally divested of union membership.

Now 71 workers among the 300 dismissed are continuing the struggle, organising the Oki Electric Labour Dispute Group, since the union abandoned its struggle against the mass dismissals.

Many labour unions and workers are supporting our struggle in the courts, at rallies, at demonstrations, etc. Fund-raising carnpaigns among supporting workers and part-time jobs have enabled all 71 of us to survive and support our families.

We peddle fireworks, the country to seek to build solidarity with workers through propaganda, which makes up our living expenses.

We are badly off, but remain fully convinced of the future victory of our Swp..

M: C*. 313:0W0: 3N0 * *A*LP for a genuine social security system and minimum wage.

There is more to the success of Japanese industry, however, than purely a low-wage economy: for every robot operating in British factories, there are 800 in Japan: compare, for example, Japan's largest company, Matsushita (which owns Hitachi among others) with the UK's largest multi-national, GEC.

Percentage

In 1980 Matsushita spent more money on research and development, it has 12,000 research scientists, than GEC -which has 80 researchers-grossed in paid sales for its electrical engineering division!

The massive gulf in the scale of capital operations is accounted for by the much higher percentage of profits per year ploughed back into the Japanese manufacturing over the past three decades.

In contrast, the UK financiers have tied up 78% of Pension Fund assets in non-productive enterprises la staggering £30 billion!).

And it is with these people, the traditional financial backers of the Tory Party-not the BL strikers-that one has to locate the responsibility for the state of BL and the collapse of the UK economy as a whole.

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MICHIGAN INEMPLOYMEN TULSA"

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etc., in summer and calen- dars, etc., in winter all over