Tokyo to Enforce Ordinance against Customer Abuse Next April

Tokyo, Sept. 4 (Jiji Press)--The Tokyo metropolitan government has decided a target of enforcing an ordinance against customer abuse of workers from April 1 next year.

The metropolitan government will submit its draft of the ordinance at the metropolitan assembly session that starts Sept. 18. If enacted, the ordinance will be the first of its kind in Japan.

The draft defines customer abuse as unjust and illegal acts that disturb the working environment. The ordinance would ban such harassing acts in a variety of environments including at private companies, public organizations and volunteer activity sites.

Business operators would be obliged to make efforts to secure their employee’s safety, and customers to be careful with their words and actions toward workers. There would be no penalties for violations.

The Tokyo government will present concrete examples of such abuse and outline countermeasures in guidelines it will draw up. Industry groups and business operators will be asked to create their own manuals of how to respond to such harassment.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]