Sogo & Seibu was cornered into closing its flagship Ikebukuro department store in Tokyo on Thursday, as its labor union launched a rare strike to express discontent over the planned sale of the department store unit by the parent firm Seven & I Holdings.
Although the labor union made a bold move to prevent Seven & I from moving the buyout deal forward, the firm held an extraordinary board meeting Thursday to make the final decision to sell the Sogo & Seibu department store unit, which has been struggling to make a profit, on Friday to Fortress Investment Group, a U.S. investment fund.
About 900 members of the labor union representing Sogo & Seibu participated in the strike at the Seibu department store in Ikebukuro, which is directly connected to Ikebukuro Station and seen as a face of the district by many locals.
Strikes by labor unions hardly take place in Japan these days, and the Thursday strike by the Sogo & Seibu labor union is the first in about 60 years for a major department store, according to UA Zensen, a trade union representing employees across a range of industries.
Information from Kyodo added