By LEO LEWIS
THE TIMES OF LONDON
TOKYO — A senior Japanese executive forced to pluck weeds from a parking lot for more than 30 years has won a landmark case against his employers. The $134,000 judgment will bring about a cultural shift for Japanese corporations that prize loyalty above all: Employees who speak up against their bosses have finally won the protection of the law.
But it will probably not change the life of Hiroaki Kushioka. Today he will dress for work in suit and tie, and again report to the office for unnecessary weeding duties. In 1974, three years after joining Tonami Transportation, a large haulage company in Toyama, as an administrator, Kushioka spoke out against his company’s involvement in illegal cartels. Every day since then he has suffered a bizarre series of psychological tortures at the hands of his bosses.
The day after blowing the whistle, Kushioka, 58, was transferred to the company’s training, center on the outskirts of town and shown to his new desk — a table in the corner of a small hut with nothing on it. A university graduate who’ had previously managed office accounts, his new duties were more straightforward: He was to inspect the parking lot and remove any plants that made their way through the concrete.
“Sometimes, the pattern of my day would change and I would perform some other completely meaningless task,” Kushioka said. “I might be told to wash the dishes in the canteen or raise and lower the company flag outside the car park. For the rest of the time, I was forced to kill time at a completely empty desk.”
The only human contact he has had during his 30 years of employment is a daily visit from his boss. For’ about an hour before quitting time. Kushioka said, he is relentlessly harangued and urged to resign.
Despite this treatment, Kushioka says he does not regret his actions and has never considered leaving Tonami Transport. “I knew that as a person who blew the whistle and exposed my name in the public as a whistle-blower, my future road was set in thorns,” he said. “I couldn’t leave the company because now I was forever brand ed as a whistle-blower, I would never find a job in another Japanese company and I have a family to support.”
And You Had Complaints About Your Job?