Ruling bloc keeps plans to submit work style reform bills

February 27, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's ruling coalition signaled on Monday that it will stick to plans to allow the government to submit bills for so-called work style reform, including an expansion of the discretionary work system, during the ongoing session of the Diet.

Following the discovery of false data in a key government labor survey last week, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and five other opposition parties demanded that the government refrain from submitting the bills and conduct the survey again. The Diet session is scheduled to end on June 20.

In a written answer on Monday, the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito coalition said that the government has promised to scrutinize the survey data but did not mention the demand not to submit the bills.

The answer was taken as a rejection of the demand, provoking a strong backlash from the opposition.

"We were not making bills based on the data in question," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said during a House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting on the same day. "We have also set out the reasons why we need to submit the bills."

In response, the six opposition parties agreed to boycott Diet committee meetings on the government's fiscal 2018 budget bill unless the ruling coalition reverses course.

The government and the ruling parties initially planned to push the budget bill through the Lower House on Tuesday, but the passage is unlikely at least until Wednesday due to the wrangling with the opposition camp. Jiji Press