SNA (Tokyo) — An Osaka-based labor union is beginning to turn the tables on police repression after years of unlawful harassment.

The Kansai District Ready-Mixed Concrete Branch (Kannama) of the All Japan Construction and Transport Workers Solidarity Union has been fighting since 2017 to preserve its constitutionally-protected collective action rights in the face of a brutal crackdown launched by police and prosecutors across several prefectures in the Kansai region.

Since July 2018, union members have been subject to mass arrests on vague charges such as “forcible obstruction of business” and “attempted extortion” in spite of the fact that their actions were limited to routine activities for an active labor union such as handing out fliers and checking work sites for labor law compliance.

The repression appears to have been triggered in part by a general strike in 2017 in which union members demanded a pay rise for drivers transporting cement and ready-mixed concrete.

They may also have been targeted for their unusually effective organizing strategies, leftist ideology, and because many union members are Zainichi Koreans.

The worst of the oppression now seems to have passed. In a recent press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, attorney Yuichi Kaido noted that all the defendants have been released on bail. Moreover, the courts have been finding union defendants not guilty in each of the cases which have concluded so far.

Moreover, several embarrassing revelations have come to light during the trials. For example, one video proved that prosecutors had pressed at least laborer to leave the union. Another prosecutor was recorded making the statement that the authorities will “wear the union down”–indicating clearly the illegal union-busting intention of the authorities.

Gradually, support for Kannama has been forthcoming from other labor unions and awareness of the case has been spreading.

Still, much of the damage to the union has already been done.

Since the repression was unleashed four years ago, Kannama’s membership has fallen from a peak of 1,300 to 800 members.

This was accomplished by heavy-handed means such as subjecting union executives as well as rank-and-file members to extended periods of detention, constantly adding new charges in order to get around legal requirements for their release. In the single-most outrageous use of this tactic, Yuji Yukawa, a top union executive, was held in detention for a total of 644 days, though he has not been convicted of any crime.

Even those released on bail have been prohibited from visiting the union office or engaging in other union activities, violating the principle of freedom of association and the right to collective action guaranteed under Article 28 of the Constitution.

While in custody, union members claimed that there were instances of intimidation by police. Some said that they were told that the investigations would stop if they left Kannama.

The police crackdown, which was coordinated across several prefectures, strongly suggests a high-level organized effort to crush the union.

Masahito Nakai, an Osaka-based lawyer who represents Kannama, stated in an interview with journalist David McNeill that “there is no way that the police across all these prefectures acted alone. It is unthinkable. They had to have been directed in some way.”

The identity of those who gave the order to break the union has yet to be revealed.

What is clear, however, is the conspicuous lack of coverage of the case in Japan’s mainstream news media, which may have the resources to dig out the truth.

For several years, major newspapers paid little attention to the extreme union-busting actions of the authorities, and when they reported anything, it was routinely just to regurgitate the statements of police and prosecutors.

According to the research of Mieko Takenobu, journalist and Professor Emerita of Wako University, the management of the companies which were in conflict with the union even directly funded Hiroyuki Seto, a senior adviser to the explicitly racist Japan First Party, to brand Kannama an organized crime group on online media.

The failure of police and prosecutors to uphold the workers’ constitutional rights to organize, and the failure of the mainstream media to address these grave official abuses are unmistakable.

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