Government, labor, and management agree on working to introduce work-sharing programs featuring diverse work styles

Last December, the Government, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), and Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) met to investigate the work-sharing system, and confirmed a tripartite agreement on diverse styles of work and work sharing.

The agreement reached during this meeting was the outcome of repeated discussions that the three parties had conducted after reaching a tripartite agreement on work sharing in March 2002 that called for extensive investigations from medium- to long-term perspectives.

According to the agreement, labor and management are to make efforts to reexamine employment practices and systems, and to establish environmental conditions such as formulating an employment system that combines diverse employment/work formats. The aim is to make diversedivergent styles of work an appropriate option for both labor and management alike. The agreement also highlighted the following issues: (1) Regarding the wage and personnel systems, companies should promote fair treatment of employees that matchis linked to their work and performance (which may include treatments embracingthat apply to all companies in general). (2) Companies should make their work time management more appropriate by eliminating unpaid overtime work, for example. This should become the prerequisite for introducing the work-sharing system. (3) Companies should upgrade their human resource and capability development programs, both in-house and across-the-board.

The Government, meanwhile, will develop business category-specific models for introducingthe diverse work-sharing programs, encourage the smoothefficient introduction of such programs by stepping up studies of companies that hadhave actually implemented such models, andto provide instructions and training on the appropriate use of subsidies for new job creation efforts.

As regards the fair treatment of part- and short-time workers, which labor is strongly demanding, the agreement states that a definite conclusion will be reached by the end of the fiscal year. The agreement also incorporates the view that more discussions will be held regarding the issue of expanding the coverage of social insurance?such as pensions and medical treatment?to short-time workers.