Worked at a Japanese company for 10 years – what are my rights?

9 comments

1. The 5 year permanent employee rule might not apply to public workers aka teachers or people paid through public funds.

   Government makes rules to improve job stability but convenient exempts itself from the same obligations.

2. If you’ve been a contract worker for more than 3 years, companies are required to treat you as a seishain legally when renewing. meaning it will be harder for them to lay you off or discontinuing contracts. if you’ve worked for more than 5 years you are eligible to be permanent or limitless contract worker.

3. You’ve been an Eikawa monkey for 10 years?

4. What kind of school? Were you hired by a municipality or board of education?

   If so..

   There was an overhaul of the civil service law a few years ago, but still no dice on permanent employment if you’re considered 会計年度任用職員. Under civil service law, your contract is considered to “come into existence” every single year and would thus exclude you from any form of permanent employment. As u/c00750ny3h said, the 5-year rule doesn’t apply for these kinds of workers. The contracts of public workers operate under a completely different set of principles. No mandatory retirement age though… It’s best to double check what you’re being classified as.

   Edit: If it’s a private school that’s not affiliated with a municipality or board of education, (as in you’re not a public worker), then you may have options.

5. Please read the Japanese National Labor Laws

   They are required to give a contract after five years give you a permanency contract but not seishain.

6. >What are my rights?

   You have the right to request that your next contract not include a renewal limit. Meaning that you have the right to expect that your next contract will not contain anything like ‘this is the final contract’ or ‘this contract will only be renewed four times’.

   >Am I still classed as a temporary worker?

   You are still classified as a contract worker.

   >Or because I’ve worked at the same company for 10 years I am now classified as permanent even though I still sign yearly contracts?

   No. You do not have ‘tenure’. You are not considered permanent. You do not have those privileges and protections.

   There are two things that ‘indefinite’ contract employees like yourself need to keep in mind:

   First, your employer is not legally required to improve the conditions of the contract from year to year. For example, they do not have to offer you a raise. This year, lots of employers are giving our raises to their permanent employees, but they are not giving them to their contract employees. They don’t have to.

   Second, your employer can still refuse a renewal provided that they have a ‘socially acceptable’ reason. What is a ‘socially acceptable reason’ is a little vague, and often requires a court to decide, but things like redundancy and poor performance are usually allowable. So for example, if enrollment at a school is down, an employer can reduce their teaching faculty by refusing to renew a contract.

7. Time to join a union and get proper advice rather than here.

8. I work at a private jr/sr high. Whenever a teacher completes five years of employment, they are immediately classified as “無期雇用,” permanent employment. The caveat is that we have 3 categories: tenured teachers (obviously doesn’t apply here) , teachers with one year contracts but nearly the same duties as tenured teachers, and then part-time employees who teach between 10~12 hours with no other duties. Both types of employees get permanent employee status after 5 years.

9. A great place to start would be joining/asking the General Union this question.