Further movement called for to end unpaid overtime -- Akahata editorial, April 14 (excerpts)

A year has passed since the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare issued a directive to eliminate unpaid overtime work.

The problem remains serious as Labor Standards Inspection Offices throughout Japan found that 29 percent or 750 of 2,589 companies are in violation of the Labor Standards Law which obliges companies to pay extra for overtime.

As the corporate restructuring race is under way, workers are forced to work overtime without pay because much work has to be done by fewer workers and budgets for overtime allowance has been reduced.

Those companies that force workers to work overtime without pay are punishable under the Labor Standards Law: six or less months' imprisonment or a fine of 300,000 yen or less. The total amount of fine would have been about several trillion yen per year.

What can't be overlooked is that company management is telling workers to work overtime without pay so that their company will win the international competition and not to report their actual overtime if they want to get favorable assessments from management.

The government is responsible for ensuring that the ministry's instruction, which calls on all companies to manage workers' working hours and eliminate unpaid overtime, is thoroughly carried out and that violation of the law is ended.

There has recently been an important change in the situation: Labor Standards Inspection Offices have made on-the-spot investigations at major companies such as Toyota Motor Corporation, Hitachi Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and gave them guidance in making improvements.

Behind such important developments were workers' struggles by making use of the Ministry's instruction, wives' complaints about their exhausted husbands at Labor Standards Inspection Offices, Japanese Communist Party Dietmembers' Diet questioning and other activities, and public opinion.

Follow-up inspections and strict guidances are necessary because company managements tend to only slightly improve the conditions after being instructed by the labor authorities and soon go back to the previous lawless state.

A business-circles affiliated think tank said that 900,000 jobs will be created if unpaid overtime is eliminated and 1.7 million people will get jobs if all workers stopped working overtime. Earnest measures must be taken in order to generate new jobs. (end)