Paid leave in eikawa

7 comments

1. [removed]

2. It is somewhat legal. A representative of the employees can decide to take a certain number of paid leave days during, for example, winter break. Not sure if they can predetermine all your paid leave days tho. There is no sick leave in japan.

3. MHLW the Ministry of Labor etc info says –

   > Pre-determined Annual Paid Leave
   When an employer, pursuant to a labour-management written agreement, has made a stipulation with regard to the season in which paid leave will be granted, the employer may grant paid leave in accordance with such stipulation for portion of paid leave in excess of 5 days(this includes the number of carried over leave days).
   This kind of paid leave can be granted all at once by shutting down the whole enterprise, operating a group shift system, allowing individual leave under an organized table of annual paid leave and the like.

   https://jsite.mhlw.go.jp/osaka-roudoukyoku/library/osaka-roudoukyoku/doc/foreign/pdf/yukyu_english.pdf

   The Foreign Worker’s Handbook issued by the Tokyo Labor Consultation Center says –

   > An employee may request paid leave anytime but may be asked by his or her employer to change the date(s) of the leave if his or her absence in the requested period would interfere with the normal operation of the enterprise.

   > Employers must ensure that all employees who are granted
   annual paid holidays of 10 days or more take 5 paid holidays every year during the period designated by their employers.

   > Paid holidays can be taken within 2 years from when it was
   allowed, but an employee can not take it after the day of his/her
   resignation.

   > An employee may be granted paid leave by the hour for up to a
   maximum of 5 days out of the employee’s total number of annual paid leave, when there is already a labor-management agreement allowing the employees to take paid leave by the hour and it is requested by an employee.

   >○ Preplanned Grant of Annual Paid Leave
   An employer may introduce a preplanned annual paid leave
   system when there is a rule set regarding the appropriate time of granting paid leave stated in the labor-management agreement.

   > However, the system can be applicable only to the portion
   exceeding 5 days of paid leave allocated to each employee.

   https://www.hataraku.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/shiryo/2021-gaikokujin-roudoushya-all.pdf

   Edited for para br

4. They can predetermine 5 days of your paid leave, but to determine more than five days it has to be agreed to by the labor force, who chose a representative to negotiate it with management.

   If you haven’t chosen such a representative, and your manager is not allowing you to take your holidays, you have a labor issue on your hands.

   This is why you need to join the union. Taking your employer to court by yourself is really difficult.

5. “Eikaiwa” and “paid leave” in a sentence together? That’s a first.

6. The bar for employers to legitimately refuse a paid leave request is very high. Ordinarily an employer cannot tell workers when to take leave either. An employer can legally say when to take paid leave if there’s an agreement with a majority union or an elected representative. The dates of such paid leave must be given in advance.

   If an employee takes paid leave that was denied, the Labour Standards Office has the power to order the employer to pay.

7. From my understanding, the company can only choose 5 of those PTO days. the remaining days you can legally take whenever you choose. A company can suggest another date, but they can’t refuse your paid day(s) off.

   Also, “We’re reminded not to carelessly use them in case of accident, getting sick, etc” If you need to be away from work for more than 4 days due to injuries or illness, there are systems in place for this:

   – If you get into an accident or you become severely sick, you can apply for 傷病手当 – I used this and got a bit over 60% of my wages for the 2 months I was away from work when I broke my foot last year.

   – if the injury/illness is from work, you can apply for 労災。I used this when I got Covid from work, got quite a bit back (I think it was 80%)

   So you don’t need to “save” your PTO for these kinds of cases, like your boss is making it sound.