Monks Need Unions, Too

by Donna Jablonski, Feb 24, 2006

After 28 devout years in the Zenkoji complex of temples in Nagano, Japan, Buddhist monk Junshin Hosono discovered what workers of all types in all parts of the world have learned: Sometimes you really need a union.
 
The Los Angeles Times reports:

Last fall, Hosono clashed with Gencho Komatsu, the 73-year-old head priest of the Tendai sect at Zenkoji. In short order, the monk found himself banished to a tiny, windowless storage room where he was ordered to spend each day writing out Buddhist sutras until further notice.
 
Hosono said the head priest also banned him from the main floor of the Daikanjin temple, the sect’s headquarters at Zenkoji, and barred him from speaking to other monks and presiding over spiritual matters such as funerals that help provide him with a modest income.
 
“It was harassment,” Hosono said. “I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to release me from that room.”
 
So the monk went out and got himself a union card.
 
Along with four sympathetic monks and four office workers from the Daikanjin temple, Hosono formed a small but certified union affiliated with Japan’s National Confederation of Trade Unions. The organization says it is the first time Japanese monks have ever banded into an affiliate. With overall membership on the wane in Japan, union leaders were only too happy to welcome newcomers, no matter how unconventional the trade.
 
“As long as they are employed and get paid, they are technically workers,” said Yuichi Kizuki, the confederation’s secretary-general….
 
“I know people might think the idea of a monk joining a union is a joke,” he said. “But this is important. It is not funny.”

So now the Brother is a brother.

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