  Reneging on the promise of shorter working hours -- Akahata editorial, December 19 (Excerpts)A government panel on labor policy has advised the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister to scrap its target of reducing average annual working hours to below 1,800 hours. It is already well-known that Japanese workers are forced to work longer hours than workers in any other advanced capitalist country. If Japan scraps the target, it will be a serious setback for workers. It appears that working hours are shorter now than before in Japan only because of an increase in the number of part-time workers. In 2003, the average hours of work in Japan was 2,016, unchanged from a decade earlier. A Public Management Ministry survey on working hours (including hours worked without pay) shows that the average working hours was 2,200 hours a year, leaving no room for abolishing the target of reducing working hours. The problem is that abolishing the target of shorter working hours will mean a serious change in the government policy on working hours. Business leaders argue that a future policy should be one of giving work schedules more "flexibility" by exempting certain categories of work from legal restrictions on hours of work in order to give individual workers more options regarding hours of work. What the business leaders have in mind is that it is no longer necessary to cut working hours; the need is for workers to try to produce results by working as many hours of overtime as possible without pay. At present, one out of every six full-time employees work more than 3,100 hours a year, causing more than 310 cases of work-related accidents that are reported a year, including karoshi (death from overwork). The number of cases of mental disorder is rising. The task now is for the government to restrict hours of work by law, eliminate the illegal practices of forcing employees to work overtime without pay, and encourage workers to make full use of their annual paid holidays. At present only 47.4 percent of paid holidays are actually used. Decent working conditions are essential for workers to maintain good health, perform family duties such as child care and nursing, and eventually to adjust to a graying society. They are also essential for solving the problem of high unemployment that leaves 3.1 million people without jobs. (end) |