Japan Press Weekly

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2020 November 4 - 10 [LABOR]

Nearly 10 billion yen in back pay for overtime paid in FY 2019

As a result of warnings issued by the Labor Ministry in FY2019, nearly ten billion yen (down about 2.7 billion yen from the previous year) was paid to workers who had worked overtime without pay.

The ministry instructed 1,611 companies (down 157 firms) to stop conducting practices of so-called "service" overtime, and 78,717 workers (a decrease by 39,963 year-on-year) were able to receive overtime payments following the ministry's corrective instructions, which were corresponding to an average of 6.11 million yen per enterprise and 130,000 yen per worker.

Demanded by the Japanese Communist Party, the Labor Ministry in April 2001 issued a directive to eradicate unpaid overtime. Since then, the ministry has annually carried out a survey concerning "service" overtime and released the results. A total of 2,568,118 workers received almost 320 billion yen in total in back pay for overtime over the past 18 years. The total number of corporations given instructions by the ministry reached 26,009.

Past related article:
> 1,768 firms instructed to pay 12.6 billion yen in back pay for overtime [August 14, 2019]