Summary
Employees of a foreign airline company sought a provisional disposition for preservation of their position and provisional payment of wages on the grounds that their dismissal was invalid because they were dismissed due to rationalization such as business restructuring and downsizing at the Japanese branch of the airline.
The company offered to rehire some of the employees after giving them early retirement and changing their working conditions, such as the type of work specified in their labor contracts, but the employees refused the offer and were dismissed.

Point of Decision
Criteria for Determining the Validity of Dismissal by Notice of Termination with Changes.

Judgment
A framework for judgment separate from the doctrine of abuse of dismissal.

Reason
The company’s notice of intent to dismiss is a notice of termination in order to change the working conditions specified in the labor contract, in other words, it is a termination of the existing labor contract with an offer to enter into a new contract, which is called a “notice of termination with changes”.

About notice of termination with changes,
-The change in the working conditions of the workers is indispensable for the operation of the company’s business.
-The necessity of the change exceeds the disadvantages that the worker will suffer from the change in working conditions, and the offer to enter into a new contract with a change in working conditions is deemed compelling enough to justify dismissal if the worker does not accept the offer.
-And the company has made sufficient efforts to avoid dismissal.

Based on the above three points, it is reasonable to conclude that the company can dismiss a worker who does not respond to the offer to enter into a new contract.

⇒Considering the company’s business situation in this case, the degree of disadvantage suffered by the worker, and the circumstances leading up to the dispute, the notice of termination with changes in this case satisfies the above requirements, and the dismissal in this case is valid.

 

Please note that the court case listed here is individual case and may be judged differently depending on the case.