Introduction of NWJ

NWJ is a trade union organizing workers in NTT group companies. Its official name is All NTT Workers Union of Japan. After the war in 1946, telecom workers, together with postal workers who were both under Ministry of Posts and Communication, organized trade union as “Zenteishin workers union”. In 1949, workers in Ministry of Posts and Communications were divided into “Ministry of Telecommunications” and “Ministry of Postal Services”. This is our start of the movement as ZENDENTSU or Japan Telecommunications Workers’ Union.

In order to respond NTT restructuring and build new organization scheme focusing on 21st century, we worked on fundamental organizational reform and restarted our union movement as NWJ (All NTT Workers Union of JAPAN) on December 1st in 1998.

NWJ has a total membership of about 169,000 of various types of business and forms of work, including Telecommunications and Information Service Industry. We aspire to work for securing workers’ employment, improving working conditions, building a prosperous with a pride, as a telecommunication carrier through the sound development of information and communication industries and work for peace, human rights and environmental issues and realizing free and equitable society for the coming generation with the spirit of coexistence and symbiosis across the globe.

Our basic principle includes the following three basic concepts;

1.As NWJ’s universal principle, we work for global issues on peace, human rights and environmental issues with the spirit of coexistence and symbiosis and,
2.keep closer relationship between union members and organization by activate mutual communications with wider perspective and realize warmhearted, reliable and secure network as telecommunication carrier and,
3.aim for realizing free and equitable society for the coming generations.

Our symbol phrase “Create The New Wave” symbolizes these concepts and goals.

Based on our basic principle and with the viewpoint of our symbol phrase “Create The New Wave”, we sets 7 primal goals that should be achieved.

We aim for ;

1.Securing employment of workers in NTT Group companies.
2.Building a prosperous society with a pride, as a telecommunication carrier through the sound development of ICT Industry.
3.Building free and equitable society through our vigorous efforts in addressing strategic issues, including peace, human rights and environmental issues, as union members as well as citizens.
4.Pulsing a dynamic trade union movement, facilitating mutual communications among members, while paying due respect to values of individuals.
5.Contributing to the advancement of international trade union movement and solidarity among workers of the world.
6.Establishing the sound labour-management relationship based on mutual trust and on the basis of equality and autonomy, thus playing our social role as a trade union.
7.Promoting activities in voluntary social activities.

The basic concepts in the guidelines are as follows.

1.Securing worker’s employment, improving working conditions and enhancing welfare services are the primary roles of NWJ. However, we also work on to enhance the value of work and pursue decent work that enriches workers’ life.
2.We promote ICT innovation which is helpful for both life and work and contribute to promoting human respect and ensuring a more affluent life.
3.We tackle issues on peace, human rights and environment, and promote political activity to realize democratic, free and equitable society.
4.We respect each member and facilitate mutual communications between members and union. We also proceed vibrant union movement and build reliable trade union.
5.We actively promote international solidarity and exchange with overseas ICT workers through the international network by ITUC and UNI.
6.Standing on the sound labour-management relationship based on mutual trust and on the basis of equality and autonomy, we build a mutual trust with companies and fulfill our social responsibility as a trade union by developing ICT industry and monitoring business operations.
7.We respect members’ diverse consciousness and sense of values and promote their contributions to the society via volunteer activity etc.

NWJ consists of 6 NTT group company-based Enterprise HQs and related organizations that had established for life support of union members.
As an executive unit, we have branch offices that had set up at over several prefectures.

Enterprise HQs manage those branch offices. Inside the branches and Enterprise HQs, division offices are also set up based on prefectural, regional area or building unit. To control and give directions to all those units, we have National HQ.