Olympus Masaharu Hamada
－LDP panel proposes criminal penalties for firms in Japan that leak whistleblower info
The Mainichi
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200204/p2a/00m/0na/024000c
The Mainichi-February 5. 2020 (Mainichi Japan)
TOKYO -- A project team of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has proposed revisions to the Whistleblower Protection Act that would oblige companies to keep their employees' reports of wrongdoing confidential under threat of criminal punishment.
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The proposed changes are designed to protect whistleblowers from retaliation from their employers. The government plans to submit a bill to revise the law during the current regular Diet session. The changes would mark the first full-scale revision of the law since it came into effect in 2006.
Key points of the revision are: requiring companies to prevent information leaks on whistleblowers; imposing confidentiality requirements on the workers and executives in charge when reports are filed within the company, which would be met with criminal penalties if breached; and including retirees and company executives as those who can blow the whistle, among other points.
A report finalized by the Cabinet Office's Consumer Commission in December 2018 proposed that businesses that treat whistleblowers unfairly by transferring them to different departments, for example, should be subject to administrative punishment. However, the proposal by the LDP project team stopped short of this, only mentioning that measures to correct unfair treatment of whistleblowers should be adopted in cooperation with related parties.
As companies and administrative bodies that handle whistleblowers' cases often feel burdened by pressure to protect them, the question of whether the government could come up with effective revision proposals had remained a point of focus.
Masaharu Hamada, an Olympus Corp. employee who reached a settlement with the optics manufacturer following a battle totaling some eight years after he blew the whistle on his boss, said he appreciated the confidentiality obligation in the proposal. "The existing law assumes that the whistleblower will file a civil lawsuit in response to the mistreatment and creates a high barrier for workers," Hamada said. He reported on his boss' illicit business practices after the law came into effect, and the company leaked his name and moved him to a different department.
Yuichiro Mizumachi, a labor law professor at the University of Tokyo, pointed out that while there is no stipulation on information leaks by companies, that doesn't mean such leaks should be tolerated. He commented, "The fact that the confidentiality obligation was written into the bill is a step forward."
(Japanese original by Reiko Oka, Lifestyle and Medical News Department)
