Why should white collar workers lose their overtime pay? -- Akahata editorial, May 16

Moves are under way toward introducing a system that would force white collar workers to work overtime without pay. It would exclude office workers from the application of the Labor Standards Law that regulates working hours.

The government's three-year plan on deregulation has called for a study on introducing such a system, and the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry is compiling data of examples from abroad.

The 8-hour day and 40-hour work-week is established by the Labor Standards Law. For extra hours of work, workers must be paid overtime compensation. At present, those in managerial positions are exempted from the payment for overtime work. The planned system is to extend the exemption to all white collar workers.

Injustice, U.S. style

If legal limits on office workers' working hours are removed, employers can force them to work as many extra hours as they want, even on holidays, without pay. Even today, office workers are forced into long hours of work and unpaid overtime work because they supposedly have to produce tangible results.

Why is the government intent on introducing such a system? The final report of the government deregulatory council calls for white collar workers to be excluded from working hour regulations on the grounds that they are "poorly compatible with such regulations". The report stresses the need for a reform that corresponds to a "new worker model".

Regulating working hours is the most important part of working conditions guaranteed by the Constitution and the Labor Standards Law. Corporations have the obligation to keep records of working hours. It is not difficult to keep such records for office workers. The alleged "poor compatibility" between working hour control and office work is nothing less than an excuse for corporations to force office workers to work as many extra hours as possible without limits.

Lifting the regulations on working hours is tantamount to returning to the 19th century when there were no legal regulations on working hours. It has nothing to do with corresponding to the "new worker model."

The planned system is modeled after the United States in which 30 million people, from executives and skilled workers to outside working sales persons, are forced out of the protection of working hour regulations. As part of their cost cutting strategy, many corporations have made more job categories exempt from overtime regulation, causing the losses of overtime pay for tens of thousands of workers, and thousands of workers have filed overtime lawsuits.

It is only the United States that leaves white collar workers without such legal protection. There's no reason Japan must follow suit.

Japan's business circles are pushing for this system to be adopted. They want to avoid having to comply with overtime regulations so that they can reduce costs and supposedly survive international competition. A member of the Japan Business Federation (JBF or Nippon Keidanren) Board of Councillors called for a broader overtime exemption that will enable major corporations to cut costs and survive international competition. Their aim is to maximize profits through cutting costs.

They are seeking to evade their responsibilities for the management of working hours, or for employees' lives and health simply to increase their profits. This amounts to discarding their social responsibility.

Japan's regulation of working conditions is very weak. The absence of legal limits to overtime work is making unpaid overtime work more prevalent than ever. This extraordinary situation is driving many people into karoshi (death from overwork) or suicides from overwork.

This is why in the last three years the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare issued directives urging corporations to appropriately administer working hours and eliminate unpaid overwork as well as excessive workloads.
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Establish rules on working conditions

If the Labor Standards Law is adversely revised to expand the overtime rule exemption to include white collars, it contradicts the ministry's current effort to defend workers and its recent policy of eliminating unpaid overwork. It will also gut the basic rules in the Labor Standards Law.

The task now is to protect workers by establishing rules to force corporations to strictly administer working hours by restricting long hours of work and unpaid overtime work, and placing upper limits on overtime work hours. (end)