The Fair Trade Commission issued a warning on the 29th to a major cooking equipment manufacturer in Tokyo after the company paid more than 380 subcontractors less than they were owed, in violation of the subcontracting law.
The commission called on the manufacturer to prevent a recurrence. The warning is the commission's formal step for breaches of the subcontracting law — the law that governs transactions between larger companies and the smaller firms they farm work out to — and it falls short of the criminal referrals the commission can make in the most serious cases.
The company had contracted the subcontractors to handle manufacturing and other work. The commission found that it then cut the amounts it paid them without justification.
The warning covers more than 380 businesses that took on the outsourced work. The commission did not say how large the total reduction was, or over what period the payments were made.