The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by the labor union of the now-defunct Japanese National Railways for enforcement of an order by the Central Labor Relations Commission for three Japan Railways companies to hire nine former JR union employees.

The lawsuit was one of the focal points of the protracted row between the National Railway Workers Union and the JR group, which was born with the privatization of JNR in 1987. Upon the privatization, scores of labor union members were not rehired by the JR carriers.

The Central Labor Relations Commission ordered that the nine be rehired and that the status of 1,047 other JNR employees, mostly labor unionists, be reviewed to determine if those who had been rejected by the carriers had been subject to an inappropriate decision.