[English summary of Japanese article, provided by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre] Benesse Holdings, one of the main Japanese corporations providing distance learning services, has been in the news recently due to a scandal related to the leak of customers’ personal data. Already 7.6 million instances of these leaks have been confirmed, which, according to the Consumer Protection Agency, is the worst on record domestically. Benesse has long been infamous for poor treatment of its employees: in 2008, a district court ruled against its practice of moving unwanted staff to a “dead end” department in an effort to force them to quit. A couple of weeks ago, Eikoh Harada, started as CEO of the corporation. Harada is well known for his poor treatment of workers at McDonalds Japan: in 2009, the firm settled out of court with workers who had been arbitrarily designated as managerial staff and deprived of overtime pay. McDonald had to pay each of the managers JPY 10 million (approximately USD 100,000) in unpaid overtime, and announced that it would henceforth pay overtime to its 2000 managerial staff. Harada announced a major shakeup upon his arrival at Benesse, and around 100 of its staff have reportedly been told that they had the choice of being reduced to contractual status (maximum length of five years) in cities far outside of Tokyo or resigning.