The Central Executive Committee of Rengo on 12 February 1998 approved the following counterproposal against the Government's bill of the Labour Standards Law revision that had been approved by the Cabinet Council on 10 February.
1. Regulations on overtime, holiday and night work
The limit of overtime and holiday working hours should be specified in the article and the maximum hours for night work should be set up. Overloaded work during the overtime, holidays and night work does not only adversely affect workers' health, but also makes it difficult to carry on family life, such as child and parental care, in the ageing society with fewer children. Therefore, we need a policy not to create male workers who can not afford to assume family responsibilities or female workers who are forced to work on part-time basis due to family responsibilities they are expected to assume. Since this point is not fully satisfied in the Bill, we demand to set up a new work rules to promote the equal participation of both men and women, taking into account the actual situation of shift work in each industry.
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Overtime work should not exceed 360 hours per year. Weekly and monthly maximum working hours should be established.
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Holiday work should be at the maximum allowed once 4 weeks.
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Night work should not exceed 53 hours and 8 times per 4 weeks.
2. Introduction of a new type of discretion work
The introduction of a new type of discretion work should be excluded from the Bill and should be further examined. The Bill introduces a new type of discretion work on the top of the existing ones, which are proposed applied to planning, designing, research and analysis jobs related to the overall management of the business. However, these are jobs nowadays that are required long working hours and are in most cases done by those who belong to a body assuming the overall management of the organization concerned but do not have the right of discretion.
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In particular, this new type of discretion work should not be applied to general white-collar workers. The consultation between labour and problems of unpaid overtime work and health of workers.
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Scope of workers and jobs that should subject to this new type of discretion work should be clarified and further discussed and this provision should be deleted.
3. Working hour reduction incorporated with the deregulation of irregular working time arrangement
If irregular working is not implemented in a proper way, it may put heavier burden on workers and so due consideration should be given to health and family life of workers concerned. And this arrangement has been originally introduced in the view of reducing working hours. Therefore, the following conditions should be established:
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Irregular working time arrangement within the period of one year should be introduced on the condition that contracted weekly working hours should be less than 40 hours.
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In the case of a company achieving 40 hours a week, the condition should be that contracted weekly working hours should be less than the current hours.
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