 Labor ministry says home helpers should be treated as workers The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has recently issued a circular advising the prefectural labor bureaus to instruct private home help service providers to recognize their staff members as workers whose working conditions are regulated under the Labor Standards Law. This is good news for those who are working as helping hands for people who need them because 80 percent of them are non-regular workers and low paid. In Japan, an overwhelming majority of home helpers are working without employment contracts, and in most cases the Labor Standards Law is not applied to their working conditions. Trade unions and other related organizations have demanded that home helpers who work on an on-call basis be treated as workers in strict compliance with the Labor Standards Law. In the Diet, the Japanese Communist Party has insisted that it is wrong for service providers to treat those who have signed up for home care as "subcontractors" and that these helpers need to be covered by the employees' accident compensation insurance and other labor law provisions, including working hours. In a comment reported by Akahata on September 27, JCP Policy Commission chair Koike Akira said, "The government circular will help improve the home helpers' working conditions and care services. We will continue to demand higher fees for home help services commensurate with the points made in the circular." (end) |