A front-desk employee serving a guest at a hotel in Shinjuku ward, Tokyo. - PHOTO: THE JAPAN NEWS/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
TOKYO (Japan News/ANN): The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly’s enactment of Japan’s first ordinance banning so-called customer harassment – in which a customer harasses a worker – has been welcomed by workers plagued by customers’ unreasonable demands, but the challenge now is to ensure the ordinance has the intended effect, as drawing a line between legitimate complaints and harassment is difficult.
“Employees are human beings, just like customers. I hope this (ordinance) will lead to greater understanding among the public that customer harassment is unacceptable,” said Hirohisa Suzuki, 64, president of the company that operates Hotel Listel Shinjuku in Shinjuku ward, Tokyo.
Employees at the hotel are often forced to spend hours apologising to guests who, in some cases, yell at them for leaving a single hair on the floor, or threaten to post their complaints on social media after finding dust behind the TV in their room.
To protect the employees, multiple people are assigned to handle customer complaints, and occasionally the hotel has had no choice but to ban the customers from entering.
“We leave cases that violate the law, such as extortion and threats, to the police, but there have been cases that don’t amount to criminal acts, such as behaviour that borders on sexual harassment and aggressive requests for room changes. We have had a hard time dealing with those kinds of cases,” Suzuki said. “We hope that the ordinance will help wipe out all customer harassment.”
According to a survey released in June by UA Zensen, a labour union that covers distribution and services industries, 46.8 per cent of 33,133 member employees said they had been harassed by customers within the past two years. About one-third of respondents said instances of customers causing a scene were on the rise.
Many workers have been forced to leave their jobs or died by suicide due to mental or physical illnesses caused by customer harassment.
At the request of the labour community, the Tokyo metropolitan government since autumn 2023 had been considering countermeasures with experts to combat the issue. No objections were raised about banning customer harassment, but some voiced concerns that if a customer’s legitimate demands were considered harassment, it might infringe on their rights.
In the light of that concern, the city’s metropolitan government intends to create guidelines that specify what constitutes customer harassment and present them to industry representatives by the end of 2024 to ensure the ordinance has the intended effect.
“Installing security cameras and telephones with recording functions, a measure that could be effective in preventing customer harassment, is a hurdle for small and mid-sized companies in terms of costs,” said Mr Hiromasa Sasaki of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, a member of the metropolitan government’s study group. “It is important for the metropolitan government to provide support to businesses that implement such measures.”
Tokyo’s moves are having ripple effects on the public and private sectors. In June 2024, the central government included for the first time in its Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform a call to strengthen measures to combat customer harassment.
The following month, an expert panel of the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry proposed that legislation be enacted to require companies to take measures against customer harassment. In the private sector, East Japan Railway, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines have drawn up plans to deal with customer harassment strictly.
“Behind customer harassment lies excessive competition among companies, as well as a corporate culture in which workers who can deal with malicious complaints are recognised as being capable,” said Toyo University’s Professor Masayuki Kiriu, who specialises in criminal psychology and is well versed in customer harassment.
“Consumers and companies are essentially on equal footing, so the hope is that the ordinance will help consumers change their mindsets while also leading companies to eliminate their overly humble attitude towards customers.” THE JAPAN NEWS / ASIA NEWS NETWORK
