The Tokyo District Court ruled in favor of two plaintiffs who sought to have temporary transfer orders by their employer invalidated on grounds they were nothing less than a blatant attempt to coerce them into retiring.
Judge Eri Shinohara said Nov. 12 that the transfer orders by Ricoh Co., a major supplier of office equipment, were intended to place the workers into irrelevant duties to pressure them to quit.
Shinohara said the orders were an abuse of personnel management authority and that the complainants were not obligated to work at the designated posts.
Ricoh appealed the ruling the same day.
The ruling sounded an alarm on the use of transfer orders to coerce retirement.
The Asahi Shimbun has reported on cases of "banishment rooms" in many companies, whereby the employer transfers its workers to irrelevant divisions or subsidiaries to pressure them into early retirement.
According to the court decision, the two male plaintiffs, in their 40s and 50s, were hired as engineers and had been engaged mainly in research and development.
When Ricoh called for voluntary retirees in July 2011 as part of measures to reduce the payroll, the two men were asked by their superiors to apply to the program. They both refused, and were given the transfer orders two months later.
They have since been assigned to product labeling, packaging and other tasks at a Ricoh subsidiary.
Shinohara said transfer orders by companies are not set in stone, and in some cases may be deemed invalid after overall consideration of the method of selecting the workers to be transferred, the disadvantages they may suffer, the objectives of the transfer orders and other circumstances.
Shinohara pointed out that, in the case at issue, everyone who refused to retire voluntarily was handed transfer orders.
She added that the workers were transferred from duties centered on office work to posts involving physical labor.
"No consideration was given to expertise and age," the judge said. "The (new) duties are thought to be demanding both physically and psychologically."
She cited these circumstances to decide that the transfer orders were "intended to pressure the target workers into voluntary retirement" and dismissed Ricoh's claim that they were aimed at cost reductions.
Following the Nov. 12 ruling, the plaintiffs held a news conference at the labor ministry and emphasized their desire to return to their work as engineers.
They said they were transferred from an office in Kanagawa Prefecture to a Ricoh subsidiary in Tokyo where they were assigned to physical labor in a warehouse without air conditioning, and see their expertise in design and development being wasted.
The two men were also given low ratings, which drove them further into a psychologically tight corner.
"It was a recommendation for retirement in disguise," one of the plaintiffs said. "I couldn't stand the way they applied the screws to pressure us into retirement."
Article 14 of the Labor Contract Law says a temporary transfer order shall be invalid if it is found to be an abuse of authority.
The latest ruling acknowledged the need for transfer orders aimed at cost-cutting, but pointed out a lack of rationality and transparency in the target selection process for the transfer orders in the present case.
It said they were intended to shed redundancy because the workers were assigned to duties they had never done before.
(This article was compiled from reports by Ryujiro Komatsu, Tomohiro Yamamoto and Senior Staff Writer Takehiko Sawaji.)