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Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Japanese workers unpaid for over 200 hours of work a year

Unpaid working hours in Japan has remained as high as 200 hours per worker a year since 1999, and it reached 214 hours in 2005. This serious violation of the Labor Standard Law amounts to a corporate crime.

The revelation came in a survey conducted by JCP House of Representatives member Sasaki Kensho.

Sasaki compared working hours declared by workers and corporations using government statistics, and found that unpaid work per worker in 2005 reached 214 hours, 33 percent more than that of 1996.

In the same period, the number of full-time workers decreased by 1.24 million mainly due to major corporations' personnel cuts aimed at reducing costs. In order to compensate for the reduction in personnel, corporations have made their employees share larger amount of work by forcing them to work longer, in many cases without pay.

Last year, 7.5 million workers worked more than 60 hours a week. Among male workers in their 30s, the number increased by 390,000 compared to that of 1996, and one in four worked such long working hours.

In response to the demand of business circles and big corporations, the Japanese and the U.S. governments intend to introduce a white-collar exemption system that will allow corporations to arbitrarily make their workers work without overtime payment.

Sasaki pointed out that corporations are still forcing workers to do unpaid work in secret, despite some achievements of workers' struggles to make corporations pay the unpaid wages.

Pointing out the danger that the white-collar exemption system would legalize such corporate crime, Sasaki emphasized that the planned deregulation of labor laws needs to be foiled and that humane rules governing labor conditions must be established.
- Akahata, July 19, 2006