borderline illegal night work using overtime allowance??

Hi I work within a large japanese company with an “all English” environment

My role is cloud based and we need to do OnCall work and work at night.

According to standard Japanese Labor law and the contract we should be on a premium of 125% from hours between 10pm to 5am

However the company puts 100% of those hours on our overtime allowance (みなし残業) so in reality we only get 25% of hour hourly pay.

Meaning I have to do 30 hours of night work a month to get a single days worth of my base wages added to my paycheck. Due to the overtime allowance system.

For work on weekends it seems they actually pay the 135% premium rather than putting 100% of it on overtime allowance

Coming from a western country with very strict overtime laws and no such thing as an overtime allowance.

It feels like I am being exploited and I am wondering if they are legally allowed to do this

3 comments
  1. >Hi I work within a large japanese company with an “all English” environment

    How is working at Rakuten these days?

    Anyway, you need to check at your Rules of Employment Book (就業規則). See what みなし残業 is defined for, and when 深夜残業代 is paid for. Do you happen by any chance working Shift for the midnight time?

  2. I had this at my last position and I put in an inquiry on this with the government (I cant find the address that I contacted now…), but what you are being told is what I was told from the government as well.

    If you are a salaried employee, you get paid your salary already and any midnight overtime work would be 25% of your computed hourly wage added onto your salary for each hour of midnight overtime worked.

    I will continue to look for who I contacted on this but I did the same thing you did when I saw what my company was doing, but found out that this is correct.

    edit to add, please follow up as every case is different and just because I received the same answer as you did, doesn’t mean it is also applicable to your situation.

  3. It sounds like you’re getting your overtime pay? The overtime allowance is the overtime allowance is the overtime allowance, and you’re getting the difference right? That sounds like the point of the overtime allowance. Like if you do zero hours of overtime you’ll get 30 hours paid anyways right?

    Now the thing I wonder about is whether you’re getting hours even when there aren’t incidents…

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