Japan Press Weekly

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2014 July 2 - 8 [LABOR]

8-hour work day, lessons from WWI

A hundred years ago in July, the first-ever world-scale war (July in 1914 - November 1918) broke out, leading to the creation of an international labor organization as a sister institution of the League of Nations based on the 1919 Peace Treaty of Versailles.

Through the war, the international community came to understand the need to set regulations on working conditions because poor conditions of labor “produce unrest” and imperil “the peace and harmony of the world”.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) in its Convention No.1 limits “the hours of work in industrial undertakings to eight in the day and 48 in the week”. Since then, 95 years have passed. Yet, Japan has not ratified the convention.

The government of Japan points to the inconsistency between the ILO convention and domestic legislation, namely Article 36 of the Labor Standards Act and the discretionary work system.

The former allows employers, who conclude a labor-management agreement under Article 36 of the Labor Standards Act, to induce employees work beyond the legal limit. The latter leaves the allocation of time at work to the discretion of workers under Article 38 of the same law.

Both articles in effect legitimate long hours of work.

The government led by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in the latest growth strategy hammered out a new system on working hours, delinking the amount of wages from the length of hours worked. This will exempt employers from paying overtime pay. What is more, it will expand the discretionary work system as well.

Prime Minister Abe should learn from the tragedy of world war 100 years ago in which bad working conditions imperiled the stability of society and world peace.