I mainly work from home and received an invite for an in-person meeting with the boss. We have our usual small talk and a coffee and he says I am to be immediately fired for ‘sexual harassment’. I am completely taken aback by this. He provides some vague statements about the complain, but the key problem seemed to be that I looked at someone in a way that made them feel uncomfortable during one of our monthly in-person meetings. Speaking with my colleagues via LINE, everyone was surprised and said they thought it was absolutely ridiculous and that the group in question (whom don’t seem to like me very much) are very good friends with the boss outside work.
I was already looking for new work because the company didn’t seem to be doing too well financially, but they immediately offered me a position as a contractor with lower pay than what I was going to make after the probation period. I haven’t signed anything – even the new contractor contract. I attempted to reach out for clarity and was ignored.
**tl;dr Boss arranged meeting and fired me on the spot for ‘sexual harassment’, immediately converts my soon to be seishain contract to a contractor one. I haven’t signed anything, nor received any information about next steps, reasons for ‘dismissal’, etc. Now what?**
I had a look through these two threads but the circumstances are somewhat different:
Help: Fired from the job during probation for seemingly no good reason from japanlife
https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/obt6sn/fired_without_noticeprobation_period/
18 comments
Commenting for reference
I wouldn’t want to work for a company that brands you as a sexual harasser just for looking at somebody.
Assuming of course you weren’t being creepy.
Does this mean if you accept lower pay, you’re free to sexually harass your coworkers?
Start an onlyfans and quadruple your salary!
Those posts give me flashback of Fight Club scene with the boss “beating” Ed Norton…
This is preposterous and the most flimsy thing they could ever come up with. Often easier to make a case of inappropriate emails sent or stolen IP. You looked at someone? If you want to fight it contact a labor lawyer. For context: Are you a supervisor of this person you allegedly harassed? And you’re a woman and I presume the “victim” or “accuser” is a man? Pretty rare here I’d imagine.
Firing you for “sexual harassment” but then immediately re-employing you is shady. I would seek support from the labor bureau and also look for a new job.
Companies get away with a lot of stuff because there are no consequences. No company likes being on the labor bureau’s radar and investigations and audits are really time consuming. It also shows that they can’t push you around like that and will be more careful with you until you leave.
Know your rights and fight for them.
[https://tebiki-jp.com/in/work/labor-law/#chapter-3](https://tebiki-jp.com/in/work/labor-law/#chapter-3)
They have to pay you at least 30 days of work if they fire you on the spot, so only paying you for half of this month is illegal.
Gather proof and contact the bureau of labor, they have templates that you can send to the HR of your company. The fact that they are offering you a new contract after firing you should be good enough to get the decision overturned (not like you’d want to stay with them so more likely, you will negotiate a severance paycheck).
Absolutely do not sign anything.
Hard to fight this. I would not bother thinking of suing or anything like that. Regardless of whether someone did it or not companies these days won’t bother even investigating and take the side of the claimer.
Being on the cynical side, some companies will use something of the sexual nature to try to get an employee fired but also offer them a few weeks/months of pay to “ease the pain” or offer them a lesser contract. This is a tactic to cut cost and fire someone for a “legitimate” reason but appear superior in the situation by “trying to help.” Most likely they just didn’t want you to be a full time worker.
You can’t be lawfully terminated during your probation period without a reasonable cause. The whole contractor switch thing is weird, and makes the claim that you were a bad/pervy worker hard to justify.
Talk to a labor lawyer. There are English-speaking labor lawyers around. It’ll cost you about ¥11,000 for an hour consultation. You may have a case, depending on stuff.
Fired and offered a new job at lower pay? Your employer is taking the piss. Even if the allegation of harrassment is true, why would they continue to employ you?
Sounds to me they want to keep you but at lower pay and the harrassment charge is to scare you into agreeing.
You need to get a lawyer. That’s some bullshit.
Are you particularly keen on one of the female employees there?
I have a bit of a different experience, but this might actually be interesting for your case.
I work in law translation and obviously the people I work with tend to be experts in a wide range of fields of law. At one of my previous companies, I started together with this lady that was a little older than me, who seemed kinda quirky, but so do most people in the field. She turned out to be more than a little quirky, and she actually ended up sexually harassing me and saying/doing some very wild shit to people of her team.
Since it was her probation period it should’ve been easy enough to get rid of her, but being seishain after all and our director (所長) having had issues being sued in the past for firing seishain, he was scared enough to just give her at least 3 months worth of severance to “find another job” despite all the proof we had of this lady being absolutely unhinged. It’s likely she wouldn’t have had a case in the end, but our director didn’t want to take that risk (again).
My point being, the moment you’re dealing with people that know their own rights through and through, you’re better off giving them money in the hopes they won’t put up a fight since seishain rights are so ridiculously strong here.
So if you feel like putting up a fight, get a somewhat decent lawyer and it’s actually very possible they will try to give you a deal before it ever goes to court. As much as I personally hate sexual harassment, personal accounts of you looking at somebody funny is never going to qualify as such unless they have actual footage of you doing ridiculous shit like persistently looking down someone’s cleavage and suggestively licking your fingers.
Im sorry for that.
There are a lot Black kigyou in Japan.
Search for another job.
Document and record everything, join a union.
Because you aren’t Japanese, they would probably move to demote you as a foreigner. Japanese staff rarely ever see consequence for their sekuhara episodes, no matter how recurrent.
Nah, they just wanna pay you less!
You looked at someone wrong? More like a female staff member just wanted to drive attention to herself by saying the foreigner ogled her, so she can flaunt how beautiful she is to her colleagues. Somebody close to the boss who’s banging that particular staff member was angry, and complained to the boss that you looked at her with lecherous intentions.
You probably did look at her, she caught you, you recoiled your eyes in a weird way, and it was compounded by the fact that some people look creepy with masks on.
I hope that bullshit company of yours isn’t going to start rumors that sexual harassment was never a problem in Japan, and that the company only implemented it to penalize the foreigners for their behavior.
Regardless, I wouldn’t walkout of that company, I would runout.
You should be hunting for a new job anyway, the company is about to collapse.
xD
Keep looking for a new job. They are trying to exploit you. Only sign if you can quit after 2 weeks