Half a million government workers in Japan are illegally employed as temporary' workers, with no benefits and low pay. Several have taken the government to court, but to no avail.
Some of the affected women appealed for support for their plight at the convention center. Their cry: "Don't let the Japanese government exploit and throw away women workers".
The case of Kuniko Yazaki is typical. Yazaki worked for eight years, five days a week as a librarian at the University of Osaka. Only when she was dismissed and took her employers to court did she find that, officially, she did not exist.
For eight years, her wages had not been paid out of the university's salary budget but out of an account for buying office stationery.
Civil Service law in Japan defines temporary workers as those who are hired to do short-term, seasonal work for less than a year. To circumvent the law, government offices employ people for one day less than a year and then hire them again and again.
These temporary workers, mostly women, are totally unprotected. Yazaki, for example, is crippled by repetitive strain injury as a result of handling 200,000 books a week. She cannot work any more, got no compensation and has to depend financially on a sister and her parents.
Fed up with the exploitative system, Michiko Kitada, also in Huairou to report on the temporary workers' plight, tried to form a union. Unions are allowed in the Japanese Civil Service but they cannot go on strike.
She was dismissed for doing so after having worked for four years full time as a laboratory technician. She also lost her case in the Supreme Court.
"We came to Huairou because we wanted all the world's people to know what the Japanese government is doing to Japanese workers," she said. " If we do not publicize it, nobody will ever know because the government is saying one thing and doing another."
To cope with increasing competition for Japanese products, the private sector is also increasingly using temporary workers. "We are the control valve that allows employers to expand or shrink the labor force according to need," said Kitada.
Women are also paid much less. The latest statistic from the Labor Ministry showed that in 1992, the ratio of men's to women's salary was 51%. The 1986 Equal Opportunities Bill failed to include a clause on equal pay.
The Women's Labor Union of Japan is organizing a petition to force the Japanese government to implement a 1994 International Labor Agreement agreement, signed by Japan, which states that temporary workers should have the same basic rights as full timers.
"From past experience, we doubt that the government will implement the agreement," Yazaki said. " So we are remaining vigilant and campaigning actively for women workers' rights."