LPT Question: Why should we never sign anything, and never agree to leave your job?

10 comments

1. Yes.

2. In general you should not sign something you don’t understand. If it involves a negative thing related to your job, don’t trust what someone says if they work for your company. They are not on your side.

3. If a company can fire you without your agreement and no consequence, 100% they will just do it and you won’t have a chance to see that agreement.

   So you can definitely get something more by not signing that letter

4. >Is it basically impossible to fire FT empoyees here, so companies have to try to force you to sign?

   Simply put, yes.

   It is not impossible, but extremely difficult to fire someone.
   You need to show that you have clearly attempted all that was possible to correct any potential issue, that you sent enough warnings to the employee that were ignored, that there is no other possible job, etc.

   In case of an economic dismissal, you need to show that keeping the employee would result in the company going down.

   Of course, assuming the employee is not in breach of the internal regulations of the company (even if he is, you can’t just fire her/him on the spot, bar some very serious shit and warnings must be sent, etc.)

   >When do you leave if you’re not signing anything and they want you to leave? Is it really possible to refuse to sign forever and just keep the job even though they want to fire you?

   It’s possible, but even if they can’t force you to leave, they can very much make your life very unpleasant. You would not keep the job, you’d keep a job. You can be transferred to the newly set up “bullshit department”, your titleless job may be switched to different room without a PC or a phone, facing the bathrooms, filing out useless papers and interacting with no other humans, with no prospect of raise of any kind (there’s even a word for that, 追い出し部屋).

   That’s up to you to weigh how much you value your sanity.

5. As others have already mentioned it’s basically impossible to fire a full time employee. The OP in the thread you are referring to verbally agreed to stay home and look for a new job. So he will not be showing up to work for the next two months which will, if I understand correctly, give the company grounds to fire him. He will lose everything if he doesn’t follow the advice others have given him in the replies.

6. Hi @Financial_Prudence,
   Well, i guess it refera to one of my comments.
   Once you refuse to sign, what will happen next depends if you work for a « black kigyo » or a white one.

   If you are a consultant, maybe they will not give you new customer for example.
   If you have ‘normal’ office Job, they may take out your SAP access right…
   Anything can happen.

   This is where you need to stay mentally strong as they will try to find « bad performance » reason to dismiss you.
   So like a basketball player who is being benched and not playing , you need to stay professional and ready to play.

7. This question is flipped over its head IMHO. Let’s see what a contract is:

   >”A contract is an agreement between private parties creating mutual obligations enforceable by law. The basic elements required for the agreement to be a legally enforceable contract are: mutual assent, expressed by a valid offer and acceptance; adequate consideration; capacity; and legality.” – Cornell Law School

   Of this the key part for these discussions is that mutual assent must be proven objectively “(e.g., an offer to do X in exchange for Y, followed by an acceptance of that offer)”.

   Now this is not a Japanese definition and has no legal basis here AFAIK, **but** I still think it’s a good principle to live by. So when presented with *any* contract to sign, I always make sure that it does indeed benefit me in some way. Assume that anything you sign is a contract.

   Also realize that 100% of the times someone is asking you to sign something, it’s because it’s voluntary and there is an alternative. You might like or not like the alternative, but there is one for sure.

   Simple example: if you go to a doctor to get some vaccines, and they ask you to sign some liability release *after* you got the vaccines (a contract basically saying “if you get a reaction you cannot sue us”), you get nothing for signing so I would not. *But* if they ask you to sign it *before* the vaccines, they can make it a requisite to give you the vaccines, in that case you *do* get something for signing so I would sign it.

   Back to the case in point, if you want to continue working at a company and they are asking you to sign a paper that says that you do not want to work there, why would you even sign it? It’s not true, you get a very big economical penalty by signing it (lost job, reduced unemployment since you are quitting, etc), and you don’t even get anything good.

   So if you are going to agree to get something pretty bad, the least you can do is to ask for something in return! Now how much you can get would depend on many things, like your negotiating skills, Japanese knowledge, etc. but even if you are really bad at those, you can *pretty easily* pick up 2-5k USD there by just not signing it straight away and asking for some severance pay. I don’t know the upper limit, but as some people say multiple months of salary as a lump sum are not out of the question, at all.

   So it’s not that *you should never sign anything*, heck if they do offer you a big-$ severance chance you might want to do it, but normally they would lowball those and with a bit of negotiation you can probably get more.

   The problem with a voluntary signature here and why it might be difficult to fight in court, is that if you do not want to leave your job then signing a “I want to leave my job” is a very negative thing, but if you want to leave your job then it’s a positive thing. Signing it is saying that you indeed want to leave and that’d be a positive thing for you, hence why it might be enforceable (or it might not if you can prove you were forced, but remember you want to avoid a lawsuit if possible and reach an amicable agreement).

   Other examples relevant to Japan-life: do not sign a police-written confession, I know the alternative is they probably holding you for few days but if you sign it you are basically admitting to whatever you are being accused.

   *I am not a lawyer, specially not yours, and this is not legal advice, just an overview of what I think/do. I’ve had many of these conversations with an actual lawyer (different country/law though) and I find the topic so interesting.*

8. Or you can get a lawyer and they have to deal with a professional. Might cost a few $$, but you will get a better deal and not have to worry about what to say or not to say, and can still get a good severance package.

9. 1, 2 & 3:
   When you become a full time shain, you become nearly unfireable . The process for getting rid of a full time employee is very difficult and complicated. So they either have to pay you off to leave or you have to quit voluntarily. If you’re going to lose your job anyways, why would you willingly give up the payout? Also, if they fire you, you get unemployment immediately after through Hello Work. You basically lose all the positives of being full time if you sign. Those perks are built in to protect full time workers for a reason.

   3) they have to keep you on. They will usually move you to meaningless task or get bored of having you on staff and pay you off with a nice bonus.

   And most of all, never sign a document you don’t fully understand. No matter where you are.

10. Companies fire people, people here will say it’s impossible but a company can make a mountain out of a molehill, claim they tried, give you a warning or two for show and then push you out.

    I have come across people who have been fired, it’s not some legend, it does happen here.