October 9, 2016
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2016 October 5 - 11 [LABOR]
Gov’t inability to respond coherently revealed by JCP Koike’s questioning in Diet |
The government late last month established the Prime Minister’s Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform to discuss what kind of reform should be specifically made. The 15-member council, however, accepts only one labor union representative while having seven business leaders, including the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) chairman on the council. It is very different from the Labor Minister’s 30-member Labor Policy Council on which workers accounted for one third.
Koike pointed out that the membership of Abe’s panel “is obviously biased toward employers.”
Kato Katsunobu, Minister in charge of Working-Style Reform, said in response that what counts most is having discussion.
Criticizing Kato’s circular answer, Koike again said, “I said, the labor-to-management ratio is way off balance!”
Then PM Abe answered, “It is a matter of perspective. What we have in mind is that executives of each organization will discuss issues from their respective perspectives.”
Koike again had to say, “I’m not talking about the matter of perspective. It is an extremely ill-balanced council from any angle, isn’t it?”
According to a Nikkei survey released on September 16, 51% of company presidents in Japan’s major industries have high expectations for the expansion of the discretionary work system followed by the promotion of teleworking or homeworking (43.5%), the introduction of a “zero-overtime payment” system (42.2%), and the introduction of a monetary settlement system for dismissal disputes (25.9%). On the other hand, they pay little attention to what workers call for. The percentage of company presidents who answered they expect the government to impose a ceiling on overtime stays at 8.8%, and the figure becomes only 4.8% when it comes to equal pay for equal work.
Koike said, “Discussions among only employers will tilt undoubtedly toward the implementation of systems which workers and labor unions are opposed to.”
Minister in charge Kato had to admit that management is negative about setting an upper limit on overtime work and bringing about equal pay for equal work. He then used sophistry, “In that sense, it is necessary to invite business leaders to participate in reform discussion.”
Koike refuted, “In the first place, employers do not want systems supported by workers. If you really seek to review the current working system, you should accept more workers to balance the council members evenly.”
Here came Abe again. He said, “Many corporate managers are cautious about equal pay for equal work. In order to gain their consent, we invite them to discuss among themselves. Please, understand the point.”
Koike said, “Both of your arguments are not convincing at all.”
* * *
Koike moved on to a bill to revise the Labor Standards Act (a “zero-overtime payment” bill) which the government proposed in the current extraordinary session of the Diet. The bill is criticized for enabling employers to use workers as long as possible without paying overtime as the bill includes the introduction of a so-called “white-collar exemption” system and an increase in job categories covered by the “discretionary” work system.
Under the “discretionary” work system, workers receive wages only for the previously agreed-upon working hours and not for the actual number of hours they worked while being allowed discretion in how long it takes to their jobs. Currently, the application of this system is limited to workers doing certain types of jobs such as R&D and managerial jobs.
Koike cited Toyota and Sony as examples of companies using this labor system.
Toyota has been applying this system to 1,740 of its workers and Sony to 5,245 of its 10,500 workers.
Koike said that 347 of the 1,740 Toyota workers are facing a risk of death from overwork as they are working nearly 240 hours on average every month.
In response to Koike, Labor Minister Shiozaki Yasuhisa acknowledged almost half of the 1,740 Toyota workers work more than 200 hours a month. The labor minister said, “The labor law revision aims at setting guidelines to prevent workers covered by the discretionary system from shouldering excessively heavy workloads and for ensuring that these workers can arrange their work schedules with their own discretion.”
Criticizing Shiozaki for not having a grip on reality, Koike noted that even in a labor ministry survey of workers who are working under the discretionary work scheme, half of the respondents said they cannot use their discretion in managing their work schedules and setting goals for their jobs. “To set guidelines is useless to any attempt to improve this situation,” Koike said.
Regarding Sony, Koike said, “Ridiculously, Sony applies the discretionary system to half of its workers and neglects its legal obligation to pay the late-night allowance to these workers.”
Koike urged Prime Minister Abe to investigate into the corporate use of the discretionary labor system, thoroughly instruct companies which abuse the system to comply with labor laws in place, and stop extending the range of the application of the system.
Koike also said, “Prime Minister, you expressed your intent to realize a pro-worker work-style reform. If you really intend to do so, you should change the labor rules not to ones promoting further overwork but to ones including a ceiling on overtime and a long-enough interval between the end of a day’s work and the beginning of the next day’s work.
PM Abe only said, “It is up to the Diet whether or not it will approve the labor law revision bill after Diet deliberations.”
Past related articles:
> PM Abe’s panel on labor law revision ignores ILO principle of tripartite consultation [ September 28, 2016]
> 4 opposition parties jointly submit a bill to regulate working hours [ April 20, 2016]
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