Abe calls for regulatory checks on discretionary work

March 6, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stressed on Monday the need for labor standards inspectors to check appropriately how companies are operating discretionary work systems.

Abe was discussing the suicide in 2016 of a male employee of Nomura Real Estate Development Co. who was covered improperly by a discretionary work system and whose death was recognized by labor standards authorities late last year as related to overwork.

"It is important for labor standards offices to collect information from various sources and provide appropriate guidance in order to prevent such cases from happening," Abe told a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of parliament.

The labor ministry's Tokyo Labor Bureau said in December last year that it had asked Nomura Real Estate to correct its improper use of the discretionary work system for the worker and other employees and issued a special instruction to the company's president, Seiichi Miyajima.

Under a discretionary work system, workers are paid preset wages linked to fixed overtime hours rather than the actual hours worked.

The male worker killed himself in September 2016, after developing a mental disorder due to overwork. His family later applied for recognition that his death was linked to overwork and for workers' compensation, which the labor authorities granted in December 2017.

Responding to a question at the Upper House committee meeting, Abe said he had been informed of the special instruction to Nomura Real Estate but not the recognition of overwork-related death for the worker.

At the meeting, Yoshiki Yamashita of the Japanese Communist Party asked whether the special instruction was triggered by his family's application.

Labor minister Katsunobu Kato declined to make comments on a specific case.

The Abe government sought to expand the coverage of the discretionary work system to a wider range of jobs as a centerpiece of work style reform bills it plans to submit to the current session of parliament. Last week, however, it decided to drop the expansion plan from the bills after the discovery of data flaws in a related labor ministry survey on work time. Jiji Press