The JIL Labor Flash Vol.36
Email Journal 17.02.2003
Statistical Reports
Main Labor Economic Indicators
Current Topics
The number of companies introducing annual wage and internship
systems has sharply increased
Public Policies
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare issues notice easing
age restrictions in job offers
News Clippings
Companies that failed to meet the mandatory employment rate of
disabled individuals oppose disclosure of their names ...etc
Special Issue
First-ever arrest of an executive suspected of not paying for
overtime work
Statistical Reports
-Main Labor Economic Indicators January 2003-
http://www.jil.go.jp/estatis/eshuyo/200301/econtents.htm
Current Topics
-The number of companies introducing annual wage and internship
systems has sharply increased-
In January, the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development
announced the results of its sixth survey on changes in the Japanese-style
personnel system. The survey targeted 2,547 companies listed on the Tokyo
Stock Exchange. Responses were obtained from 303 companies (response rate:
11.9%).
The survey revealed that the rate of introduction of the annual wage
system has continued to rise consistently from the 9.8% posted at the
time of the 1996 survey. The rate in January had risen to 40.9%, showing
that performance-based wage systems are increasingly being adopted in
Japan.
By scale of business, 46.0% of companies with 1,000 or more employees
had introduced this system versus 35.7% of companies with fewer than 500
employees, indicating that the larger the company, the more widespread
the adoption of the system.
A particularly noteworthy change, moreover, has been the introduction
of the internship system. While only 9.0% of companies had introduced
this system in 1998, as many as 40.3% of the companies surveyed this
time did, showing that the system has been spreading rapidly and becoming
more commonplace in the Japanese business community.
Public Policies
-The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare issues notice easing age
restrictions in job offers-
In late January, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare issued
a notice to directors of Prefectural Labor Bureaus, setting forth 30%
as the goal, to be reached by FY2005, for the share of advertised jobs
that do not carry age restrictions. The aim is to accelerate the easing
of restrictions on employment age.
The notice demands the said Labor Bureaus to instruct personnel
working at various public employment security office windows, as well
as those personnel working to develop new job offers, to provide more
explanation and guidance to individual companies. At the same time,
the Ministry is required to call on the employers' organizations to
ease age restrictions in job offerings.
The Revised Employment Measures Law of 2001 obligates employers to
make further efforts. Nevertheless, as many as 77.7% of job offers
still carry age restrictions (as surveyed by the Ministry of Health,
Labour and Welfare; as of November 2002). Meanwhile, only 6.8% of job
offers have no minimum age limits and 2.6% have no maximum age limit
(the mean maximum age was 46.4 years and the mean minimum age was 20.9
years). Although the percentage of job offerings that have no age
restrictions whatsoever has increased sharply from the 1.6% posted in
September 2001 prior to the enforcement of the said Law, it still is
only 12.8%.
The present notice calls on prefectural Labor Bureaus to raise the
maximum age as much as possible when accepting job offers, even if
such job offers have logical reasons for setting age restrictions.
In its FY2003 budget, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
appropriated approximately 570 million yen to the Programs to Promote
Age-Free Employment (provisional title), and is planning to unveil
educational programs and initiatives towards resolving this problem.
1US$≒\120 (February 2003)
News Clippings
-Companies that failed to meet the mandatory employment rate of disabled
individuals oppose disclosure of their names-
In response to demands made by civic groups to disclose information,
the names of companies that failed to fulfill the legal employment rate
of disabled individuals will be publicized. Of the approximately 9,000
such companies (the number of companies that failed to fulfill the
employment requirements as of June 2002), about 1,500 have reportedly
opposed such public disclosure. The Tokyo Labour Bureau is planning
to announce the names in March. However, if companies file official
complaints, the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare will consult
the Information Disclosure Committee once again to determine whether
full disclosure will be made or not.
(Asahi Shimbun, January)
-Toyota employees worked overtime without pay-
The Technology Development Department of Toyota Motor (Toyoda City,
Aichi Prefecture) was revealed to have received a recommendation for
correction by the Toyoda Labor Standards Inspection Office for alleged
violation of the Labor Standards Law. The recommendation is in response
to members of the said department having worked overtime without pay.
All Toyota employees use PCs allotted to them by the company on which
they register the time they report to work and the time they leave.
According to related sources, an on-the-spot inspection by the said
inspection officers revealed cases of falsified records that clearly
showed that employees continued to work on their PCs after they had
input the time of leaving the office for the day.
The recommendation was issued in January of this year, and called
for corrective measures to be taken by the end of February. Toyota has
admitted the fact, and is planning to pay the unpaid wages.
In 2000, the company paid a total of 10 million yen to 83 of its
employees in the domestic sales and other departments as unpaid wages
for overtime work done by employees.
(Nihon Keizai Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun, February)
Special Issue
-First-ever arrest of an executive suspected of not paying for overtime
work-
This February, the Tokyo Labour Bureau investigated a case of a board
chairman of special nursing home for the eldery who unreasonably failed
to pay his staff's overtime work, and arranged this individual's arrest
for suspected violation of the Labor Standards Law (nonpayment of extra
wages). This is the first case in Japan for an executive to be arrested
in relation to unpaid overtime work.
Of this nursing home's 60 staff members, 40 regularly worked an average
of 50 hours overtime each month. Some worked as much as 100 hours.
However, these individuals received only about 4 hours'-worth of overtime
pay. The non-paid overtime allowance totaled 2.5 million yen per month
and an estimated 100 million yen since the home opened in 1999.
The arrest came as the Labor Standards Inspection Office determined
the following acts as being malicious: (1) tampering with the staff
members' time cards (rewriting the time of their leaving the nursing
home) despite repeated advisories issued by the Bureau to correct the
situation; and (2) putting pressure on the staff members not to declare
their overtime work hours.
Recently, employees' unpaid overtime work is becoming a serious social
issue because of its possible causal relationship with karoshi (death
from overwork), and because it was impeding the promotion of work-sharing
schemes. The first-ever arrest that occurred in relation to this is
noteworthy, as it shows the authorities' determination to eradicate
unpaid overtime work.
What led to the Labor Standards Inspection Office's decision was
information sent in by a member of the workforce. Indeed, many of the
scandals in major corporations that made headline news last year were
triggered by insider information. Heated discussions are currently under
way on how to legally protect these‘whistleblowers'.
Unpaid overtime work is a practice seen nowhere else in the world,
and may be said to be a corrupt practice unique to Japan. This case
shows that the workers are by no means happy about accommodating this
practice.
The context for unpaid overtime work seems to be the view that
"workers would be nothing without their company". At present, labor
unions are not fighting sufficiently hard to eradicate this vicious
practice, highlighting one of the weaknesses of Japan's labor union
system that centers on enterprise-based unions.
