Industry giant blacklists workers over ideologies

[The Sushi Bandit]

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040322p2a00m0dm010000c.html

Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. (IHI), one of Japan's top heavy industry makers, signed a 168 million yen settlement with employees Monday, admitting that it compiled a discriminatory list to prevent communist party members and others from being promoted.

Sources close to the firm said lists were created in May and June 2000 under the name "ZC planning administration name list." The list classified the extent of activities of 259 people into four categories from A to D, including such information as their address, date of birth, date they entered the firm and their educational history. The 259 were also given such labels as "party member," "suspected of local activities," and "member of a singing circle," the sources said.

In addition, the lists reportedly included information on their past illnesses and those of their family.

[Ellen Forradalom]

1. Not the singing circles!

Choruses are a menace to society!

[Monte Carlo]

2. Japanese Communists?

I find that amazing. I thought Japan and Russia and China hated each other to no end.

I wonder if a Communist Party could ever win a seat anywhere in Japan. Japan is more capitalist than the U.S.

[Endangered Specie]

3. well, ill bet there are capitalists in China being silenced.

[tom_paine]

5. That's a pretty safe bet

Just because Imperial Amerika has gotten to be a Bad Guy lately, doesn't necessarily mean the ChiComs and others have gotten better.

[Art_from_Ark]

6. There is a Japanese Communist Party

or "Nihon Kyosan-to", as it's known in Japan.

http://www.jcp.or.jp/

[Art_from_Ark]

7. A little bit more about the JCP

They have a few seats in the Japanese Parliament (called, more properly, the Diet), and they also have a few elected positions at the local level. They appear to be particularly strong in the working class areas of Osaka-Kobe.

Listening to their chants and reading their placards during the annual May Day parade, and seeing their posters during the recent election, it appears to me that their platform consists of the following:

1) Getting US troops out of Japan
2) Ensuring a safe food supply (no GM crops, reducing the use of pesticides)
3) Reinstating the old system of lifelong employment and ending restructuring
4) Maintaining the public assistance system
5) Opposing war, including the war in Iraq

Thus, they don't appear to be dogmatic Marxist/Leninist/Maoist radicals. But they will never shake that image if they cling to the name "Communist"

[tom_paine]

4. Sounds like Homeland Security

Ashcroft monitoring peaceful protestors and subpeonaing records of political enemies.

Hey, at least these got caught.