Travelling to Malaysia on a Sunday (very early Sunday morning) for a (working) week long meeting. The flight itself is about 8/9 hours. HR tells me I won’t be compensated either with salary, overtime, or time in lieu. Is that legal? It’s an American owned 外資系, if that’s relevant, but HR is Japanese. Not even sure where to look for info on this tbh (aside from here!)
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You can try counter your employer with Article 38-2 of the ‘Labor Standards Act’: https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3567/en
But according to this link, it does not sound promising (unless you’re engaging in work or under work supervision during the flight?): https://employmentjapan.net/laws/travel-time-j
From a strictly legal perspective travel is not considered labor and therefore does not require compensation (aside from the cost of travel itself). Some companies will offer time in lieu as courtesy, especially in situations where you are actually expected to be working or communicating with workmates during travel, but it is otherwise optional.
Many aspects of these laws are based on old blue collar concepts where you can only be engaged in labor if you are physically in a factory.
My job gave me a 6000 yen a day stipend, but that’s all. No days off or anything, and the flight was 10 hours each way.
Yeah I never get paid for that either so I tried to schedule my flights during work hours hahaha
My work paid me 3500 JPY allowance for each day on a business trip. Travelling during the weekend was counted for allowance, but no overtime payment. They had complex calculation system depending on the departure time of the flight to say if you get full allowance, or half allowance.
Any weekend that fell during the business trip was not counted as workday, unless I had a business meeting or attended some work related thing. But 3500 JPY allowance was provided for those weekends as well, regardless of any work related actions were performed or not. If any work related action was performed on a weekend, I could/would have to take substitute day off (leave in lieu) within 1 month of returning to Japan.