The draft law named white-collar exemption will be postponed to submit to the Diet in this year. If the ruling alliance wins the Upper House election in July, the ruling alliance will submit the draft law and pass it.
I am a white-collar worker and I am against this law on concern that most of white-collar worker including me must work longer than now.
On the contrary my colleague, who must work longer than me because he works for a busier department in my company, agree with the law. In his opinion, his co-worker work inefficiently and overtime pay for these inefficient work make my company stringent. He expects that the law contribute raising base pay and his co-worker’s efficient work.
I do not agree with his opinion and expect. I know his department sometime must work overtime more than 200 hours a month. I agree with his co-worker work inefficiently, but I believe that most of workers cannot work every 16 hours a day without day-off efficiently. I also believe that this law will remove from workers the right to bring a charge to an unreasonable company.
I also disagree with the draft.
US is always a model of Japan both in a positive and a negative way.
US adopts this system to pay by merit. But conditions and ways to introduce this seem to be different between US and Japan.
In US, this system is applied only to professionals and people in administrative positions with more than two subordinates and more than $455 pay a week (Though the condition to be applied seems to be widening). But in Japan, this will be applied to almost all white-collar workers. It can be said to be for companies, not for workers.
Originally, when Health and welfare ministry ordered companies to root out uncompensated overtime work four years ago, workers began to demand wages for overtime work unpaid. Big companies had to pay an enormous sum of money. That’s why business and financial community tries to introduce this new system. They don’t want to pay for workers.
In companies, people often work across departments, and it is hard to identify a person who accomplishes a result. If this system is adopted, people won’t do any work which bring them no merit, and disparity between rich and poor, people with excellent skills and those without it will widen.