Japan Press Weekly

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2017 January 18 - 24 [LABOR]

Labor Ministry instructs 6,659 business entities to rectify breaches of labor laws

The Labor Ministry on January 17 announced that it instructed 6,659 business entities to improve their labor practices in compliance with labor laws.

Pushed by trade unions and the Japanese Communist Party to eliminate highly exploitative corporations, the ministry carried out on-the-spot inspections at about 10,000 business offices across the country between April and September 2016.

The investigation results show that 4,416 business establishments illegally forced excessively long overtime hours on workers. At 3,450 companies, overtime hours worked exceeded 80 hours a month, the government-set danger line for death from overwork. The number of business offices that required employees to work more than 200 hours of overtime a month stood at 116. Workers in 637 companies did not receive the full amount of overtime pay.

At one manufacturing company, managers arbitrarily recorded the regular closing time on workers’ cards while forcing them to work over 120 hours of overtime a month, the upper limit set in the company’s labor-management agreement.

The local labor law enforcement office pointed to the company’s violation of labor laws and directed it to lower its ceiling on overtime to 80 hours a month.

Past related article:
> JCP Takahashi demands legal limit for overtime hours [October 13, 2016]