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Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008

Police: JR West chief at fault over deadly Hyogo train crash
KOBE (Kyodo) West Japan Railway Co. President Masao Yamazaki should be held criminally negligent in connection with the deadly 2005 derailment in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, of a commuter train, police will tell prosecutors, according to investigative sources Wednesday.

Police are expected to send prosecutors reports on 10 JR West officials, including Yamazaki, 65, in September at the earliest. The reports are expected to recommend that several of the officials face similar charges.

Suggesting someone "deserves to be held criminally responsible" is the second-strongest opinion police can attach to such papers to prosecutors, following the demand for "stern punishment."

The Kobe District Public Prosecutor's Office will determine whether it can build a criminal case against the officials after receiving the papers from police.

They have been questioning Yamazaki since late July on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in death. They sought to learn the level of operational safety he was enforcing at the time the seven-car rapid-service train jumped the tracks on a curve on the JR West Fukuchiyama Line and plowed into a high-rise, killing 106 passengers and the driver and injuring more than 500.

Japan JR West chief grilled over Amagasaki crash; negligence alleged
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Saturday, July 26, 2008

JR West chief grilled over Amagasaki crash; negligence alleged
KOBE (Kyodo) Police started questioning West Japan Railway Co. President Masao Yamazaki on Friday over the fatal derailment of a JR West commuter train in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, in April 2005.

They will question him further on several occasions by mid-August with an eye to turning their case of professional negligence against him to prosecutors as early as September, investigative sources said.

Police will investigate how Yamazaki, 65, worked to ensure operational safety when the crash claimed 107 lives, as they believe the accident could have been avoided if an advanced Automatic Train Stop system had been installed, the sources said.

The Kobe District Public Prosecutor's Office will consider if it can build a criminal case against Yamazaki.

The crash involved a rapid-service commuter train on the Fukuchiyama Line on the morning of April 25, 2005. The seven-car train was overspeeding when it jumped the tracks on a curve and slammed into a condo high-rise between Tsukaguchi and Amagasaki stations.

TWSC Statement of Solidarity With Doro-Chiba Against Raid By Japanese Police Forces During G-8 Meeting

The Transport Workers Solidarity Committee TWSC protests the vicious assault on the offices and members of Doro-Chiba union on July 4, 2008. Using false pretenses, the Japanese police forces were alledgedly looking for evidence of illegal activity in the protest against the G-8 conference in Japan. This effort to intimidate and silence those unions, workers organizations and many others who are protesting this governmental meeting is a flagrant violation of democratic rights. The record of the G-8 is a history of trampling on the rights of working people not only in the under-developed world but in the more industrialized countries. This organization which is fundamentally a tool of the United States and the multi-nationals which run it has pushed deregulation, privatization and the destruction of democratic rights for working people. The world drive by the G-8 and other organizations representing the billionaires to destroy the labor movement through privatization, deregulation and other union busting policies must be stopped. These neo-liberalism policies have been opposed by US workers including the shutdown of all West Coast ports by the ILWU to protest the November 1999 meeting of the WTO. The ILWU also joined with many other protesters.

Anti-G8/Railroad Workers Union Doro-Chiba Protesters Denounce Tokyo Police Ban Of 6/29 Demonstration

June 27 2008

On June 27 the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission decided to ban the demonstration in front of Shibuya station planned on June 29 as a part of Anti-G8 Summit Workers’ National Rally against war, poverty, unemployment and privatization. (The application of the demonstration with a course passing in front of Shibuya railway station (downtown Tokyo) had been filed by the Organizing Committee of the Anti-G8 Summit Rally to the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission.) This ban is an impermissible brutal crackdown by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on the movement to oppose the G8 Summit.

The Organizing Committee of the Anti-G8 Summit Rally denounce this outrageous measure and declare our firm determination to carry out the demonstration as was planned in front of Shibuya station in defiance of the police ban.

The streets running in front of Shibuya station are usually open for marches and demonstrations of every kind and are regarded as the most popular course. The only reason given by the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Committee to ban the demonstration is that it could provoke disturbance. We shall never admit the right of workers to demonstrate to be regulated and infringed in such way.

www.doro-chiba.org

Declaration of 59th Regular Central Committee of Doro-Chiba

Doro-Chiba adopted today a new policy of struggle on the 59th Regular Central Committee meeting held in the Union Hall. We have confirmed the achievement of the struggle of the first half of 2008, which was focused on crushing the corporate policy of enforcing the so-called “Life Cycle System” and outsourcing of inspection and repair work. The most outrageous corporate plan is the “Life Cycle System” that intends to deal with serious shortage of station personnel, a result of failure of the company, by a makeshift measure, that is, by periodically transferring drivers in rotation to the station duty. JR companies are fully responsible for all these precarious situations. They have put their absolute priority on greedily seeking profit by means of outsourcing and cutting down personnel costs in total negligence of rail safety. Currently, necessary driving personnel are barely maintained by sacrificing days off and forcing even elderly drivers of the retirement age to run the train at 130 km/h. Another deadly Amagasaki rail accident is inevitable and worsening working conditions as well as further outsourcing is anticipated.

On February 20, the service of 35 up and down trains of the Keiyo Line were suspended because of cracked rail on the track at Soga station.

The notice of the maintenance of way personnel who found the crack of 8cm length in the rail prevented a serious rail accident. Nevertheless a terrible condition of rail safety has been exposed to the public. As is indicated by the photo, the joint of the rail was fractured. The photo further shows that the crack had almost reached the top of the rail. By a little more pressure on the rail, the surface of the rail could have been scraped off for 8cm length and 2cm depth. A fatal derailment of the train or a collision with another train on the adjoining track might have taken place.

The maintenance of way personnel, our fellow workers of Kokuro union members, have confessed they had never before witnessed a crack on the rail developing in such a violent way. A cracked rail is more dangerous than a broken rail in that the signal would not alarm when only the surface of the rail were scraped off by the crack, maintaining the electric
stream on the rail.

It was discovered further that the rail, which has got cracked, was laid only four years ago. Recent visual inspections (most recently on February 7) could not detect the crack. Even JR's "cutting edge" Rail Measurement Train was unable to find out the defect since the crack has seemingly developed from the bottom to the top of the rail.

In 1987, when the National Railways had been privatized, 1047 Japanese National Railways Workers were fired. Since then, they have been struggling for withdrawal of their discharge.

The division and privatization of the National Railways was the most far-reaching union-busting and the largest mass firing after World War II. From 1981, when the privatization plan had been launched under the guise of "Administrative and Fiscal Reform," until the accomplishment of the privatization, 200,000 National Railways workers were forced to leave their jobs; union-busting became harsher and harsher in this period.