Japan Ruling Bloc Vows Efforts to Pass Work Style Reform Bill

May 16, 2018

Tokyo- Executives of Japan's ruling parties on Wednesday agreed to make every effort to pass work style reform legislation during the ongoing parliamentary session ending June 20.

The policy was confirmed at a meeting among the secretaries-general and parliamentary affairs chiefs of the Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Komeito.

Opposition parties are calling for withdrawing the legislation, questioning the credibility of a work hour survey by the labor ministry used as a reference to draw up the bill, designed to revise the labor standards and other relevant laws.

The opposition side strengthened its offensive against the ruling camp after the labor ministry said Tuesday that it deleted a huge amount of data from the 2013 survey, which contained inappropriate data.

But the ruling camp has no plans to accept the opposition demand. The legislation is one of the top priorities for the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the current parliamentary session.

The ruling party executives agreed that the deletion did not make changes significant enough to affect policy judgments.

The ruling parties also hope to pass bills related to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement signed in March by Japan and 10 other countries, and legislation needed to introduce casino-featuring integrated resorts in Japan.

After the meeting, LDP parliamentary affairs head Hiroshi Moriyama told reporters that the original version of documents related to a state land plot sold at a huge discount to Moritomo Gakuen that were falsified by the Finance Ministry will be submitted by the morning of May 23, not by Friday as previously promised.

Moriyama said he is considering arranging intensive discussions mainly on the issue at the budget committees of both parliamentary chambers on May 28, a week later than previously planned.

At a meeting of their parliamentary affairs leaders, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and four other opposition parties agreed to ask the government to release on Friday the original version of the documents related to Moritomo Gakuen.

Moritomo Gakuen, once linked to Abe's wife, Akie, is one of the school operators at the center of favoritism allegations against the Abe administration.