Top Court Partially Backs Nonregular Worker in Pay Gap Suit

June 1, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling that supports part of the demands of a nonregular worker in a lawsuit seeking to correct a pay gap with regular employees.

The court's Second Petty Bench said it is illegal that logistics company Hamakyorex Co. did not pay the contract worker some benefits as it did to regular employees.

Presiding Justice Tsuneyuki Yamamoto referred to Article 20 of the labor contracts law, which bans unreasonable differences in job terms between regular and nonregular workers.

The article "calls for balanced treatment" between the two types of workers in accordance with differences in their duties, Yamamoto said.

The ruling rejected the plaintiff's claim that he is in a position eligible for pay equal to that of regular workers. But it concluded that the difference in benefit payments represents an unreasonable gap in treatment.

The contract worker is a driver at Hamakyorex, based in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan.

In the suit, the Hikone branch of Otsu District Court in Shiga Prefecture, western Japan, ruled in 2015 that only a gap in commuting allowances was illegal.

Osaka High Court in 2016 recognized an unreasonable gap in a wider range of benefits, ordering the company to pay 770,000 yen in damages to the plaintiff. Both the plaintiff and the company appealed against the ruling. Jiji Press