Japan Press Weekly

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2012 November 28 - December 4 [LABOR]

Y193 billion in back pay for overtime paid

About 193.26 billion yen in back pay for overtime has been paid to workers since the ministry of labor began its survey in 2001.

A total of 14,040 companies which include large corporations such as carmakers, banks, and power companies paid compensation for unpaid overtime to 1,553,873 workers in total over the last 11 years.

The Japanese Communist Party has taken up the issue of unpaid overtime in the Diet more than 300 times since 1976, criticizing overtime without pay as a corporate crime.

Pressed by the repeated JCP questioning, the labor ministry in 2001 issued a notification instructing employers to step up their labor time management as a precondition to eradicate unpaid overtime work. Since then, a number of employers have been given corrective guidance or charged with forcing workers to work off the clock for free.

In the Diet, JCP lawmakers repeatedly took up the problem in which many companies escape inspections by a Labor Standard Inspection Office by arguing that they cannot pay overtime money to workers unless those workers report it.

The Labor Standards Law failed to require employers to check their employees’ working hours, and a lot of corporations took advantage of the loophole. The JCP sharply criticized the legal flaw, and in March 2000, submitted to the Diet a bill to force employers to manage employees’ working hours.

One year later, in April 2001, the labor ministry issued the so-called “official notice on April 6”. It requested all businesses to check and record workers’ starting and ending time of their work, stating, “Employers have the responsibility for managing working hours.” The notification also obliged companies to use a time clock or a memory card to secure objectivity, instead of the conventional system of workers reporting their working hours.

These steps are precisely what the party had demanded. Some labor ministry officials said, “Every time the Diet opened, JCP members questioned the government about the matter, and at last we gave up. Many of the JCP proposals were incorporated into the notice.”

The issuance of the official notice became the turning point in disclosing and rectifying unpaid overtime work. It was a great success achieved by the joint struggle among workers, workers’ families, and the JCP legislators’ group.

The business world has attempted to revise the Labor Standards Law in order to introduce a white-collar exemption system so that employers can use their employees as long as possible without paying overtime.

During the LDP-led government, big businesses used the government council on economic and fiscal policy and the government panel on regulatory reform to push the government to introduce the system.

The JCP established a task force to block legalization allowing long working hours without pay and waged a struggle against the business world’s attempt, working together with workers and labor unions. This led to foiling the attempt.

Business circles, however, are still pushing to exempt white collar workers from rules regarding working hours. The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) in the 2012 proposal for deregulation requested the government to ease regulations on working hours of workers doing clerical jobs and research and development jobs. Keidanren also called for an increase in the number of job categories to which a discretionary labor system is applied.

The need now is to change the government to a people- and worker-oriented government.