To correct the gap in treatment between regular and non-regular employees, judgments should be made in each case on the basis of the jobs' degree of difficulty or gravity of responsibility. The Supreme Court has reached such a conclusion.
The top court has handed down rulings one after another in a series of five lawsuits filed by non-regular contract workers and others who claimed that it is unfair for them not to receive retirement allowances and other kinds of benefits in the same way as regular workers.
In two of the lawsuits, disputing the appropriateness of the payment of retirement allowances and bonuses, the rulings pointed out that the duties of the plaintiffs were simple compared to those of regular employees, and they had no job transfers to other sections, so there were differences in the nature of the duties between them.
As a system to promote workers from non-regular to regular positions was prepared, the top court concluded that the nonpayment cannot be said to be unreasonable.
The purposes and methods of calculating retirement allowances and bonuses vary from company to company. The Supreme Court might have given the management a certain degree of discretion, and reached conclusions on the cases after examining situations surrounding plaintiff and others separately.
It should be kept in mind that the rulings did not uniformly acknowledge the gap between regular and non-regular employees.
In separate, earlier lawsuits in which the wage gap between regular and non-regular workers was at issue, the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that when looking into whether the disparities are unreasonable, judgments should be made in each case based on individual wage items.
The latest rulings applied this 2018 line of thinking to the payment of retirement allowances and bonuses. It is significant that they also mentioned that "there could be cases in which the nonpayment of retirement allowances and bonuses could be ruled unreasonable."
It is necessary for each company to check whether their actual wage systems and treatment constitute a deviation from the range that allows the disparities between regular and non-regular workers. If there are unreasonable disparities, these must be corrected immediately.
In the other three lawsuits, filed by non-regular contract employees at post offices in various parts of the country who sought the provision of various benefits that are allowed for regular workers, the top court ruled that the nonpayment of working allowances and dependent allowances, among others, during the year-end and New Year's period was "unreasonable."
Nearly half of the about 380,000 employees at Japan Post Co. are non-regular employees. In recent years, the company has been reviewing its working conditions for non-regular employees, but further improvements will be required.
The number of non-regular workers in Japan now exceeds 20 million, accounting for nearly 40% of all employees. However, the wage standard for non-regular workers is about 60% of that for regular workers. Non-regular workers also include many young people who want to work full-time but cannot, and middle-aged and older people who are their households' breadwinners. Improving working conditions for non-regular workers is an urgent task.
The "equal pay for equal work" system, which was included in the work style reform-related laws, was applied to large companies in April this year and will be expanded to small and midsize companies next year.
It is difficult to determine what constitutes the "equal work." The government should explain in an easy-to-understand manner through such measures as improving the guidelines.
-- The original Japanese article appeared in The Yomiuri Shimbun on Oct. 16, 2020.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
