The Labour Lawyers Association of Japan Issues a Statement on the Debate over Revision of the Working Hours Law
In January, a group within the Labor Policy Council of the Ministry of Health,
Labour and Welfare, which is studying the future system of working hours,
published a report on revision of the Law on Working Hours. In line with
this, an intensive debate will be held within the division of the council
in charge of labor conditions.
Following release of the report, the Labour Lawyers Association of Japan,
which has expressed its opinions from time to time on matters related to
working hours, disapproved of the report's proposal to adopt a new, self-regulated
working hours system and pointed out its many defects, adding that the system
would be able to achieve only a small part of its objectives. On that basis,
the Association sent a written statement to the Council in which it made
a strong request that the problems related to working hours in Japan should
be remedied via extensive and intensive discussion by the Council, without
being bound by the report.
The report proposes, as a step to attain a "work-and-private-life balance",
encouraging employers to make it easier for general workers to take annual
paid holidays, and lifting restrictions on working hours for workers who
are just about to be promoted to managerial or supervisory posts and those
who engage in back-up work (referred to as semi-managers and semi-supervisors).
At the same time, the labour lawyers in their statement provided an analysis
of the problems regarding working hours, highlighting the fact that in terms
of working hours a polarization of workers in Japan has been in progress.
Those who are forced to work long hours are currently not only unable to
secure time to spend with their families, local communities and themselves,
but also in situations jeopardizing their mental and physical health. The
statement also urges efforts to overcome the problems of people working
long hours, asserting that they contribute to the declining birthrate and
hinder the realization of gender equality in society.
The statement also stresses the importance of stipulating regulations on
daily working hours: the fundamental problem, it explains, lies in the fact
that there is too much work; therefore, if the scope of deregulation of
working hours is expanded to workers in semi-managerial and semi-supervisory
posts without addressing the fundamental problem, that will neither lead
to a situation where working hours are autonomously determined, nor serve
as an effective method for shortening working hours. At the same time, regarding
the measure suggested by the report to make it easier for general workers
to take annual paid holidays, the statement attributes the difficulty of
workers taking consecutive holidays not to the Labor Standards Law, but
to the basic stance of employers who fail to launch and put into effect
schemes which actually enable workers to take such holidays; neither "work-and-private-life
balance" nor shorter working hours will be attained, it concludes,
without drastic reform of the workplace practices of Japanese employers.
Although in its statement the Labour Lawyers Association of Japan approves of some of the proposals made in the Council report, it points out, quite specifically and strongly, matters other than those mentioned above, and recommends that the EU Working Time Directive should be referred to in order to tighten up the legal situation of working hours in Japan. As such, it will loom large in future debate among the parties concerned.