OSAKA -- Three foreign national, full-time employees filed a complaint with the Osaka District Court on Friday to seek nullification of their job dismissals after their employer laid them off citing reduced sales due to the coronavirus epidemic.
According to the complaint, the three men, in their 20s and 30s, are from the United States, Germany and the Netherlands.
They joined an event-planning company in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, as contract employees between 2017 and 2019. They subsequently became full-time employees and worked mainly in sales and marketing. However, they were forced to take time off from work starting April 8 due to the spread of infections and were finally laid off on May 15, as the company concluded it could not expect any sales in the near future.
The dismissed workers' side claims that with the government's declaration of a state of emergency lifted, more events will likely be held, saying, the epidemic "has only left a relatively small economic impact on the company, thus the decision to dismiss them is an abuse of dismissal rights."
The three men demand a confirmation of their status as employees in a labor dispute against the company.
Their lawyer said, "There might be many such cases in which employers easily lay off their workers using declining sales as an excuse."
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