Hi,
The company I work as a contractor for has been acquired by a big international company and the way it works is that all employees (including contractors, as we were considered employees) get an offer to join the new company as a full-time employee, and we can accept or refuse it.
In all the documents that came with the offer, there are policies and rules that mention that my work hours will be 8am-6pm, including an hour lunch break and a mandatory hour of overtime, which makes for a week of 45 hours minimum.
I know that overtime is included in the total salary but is it legal to force mandatory overtime?
Another mention is that the company reserves itself the rights to request that I transfer to another location, within Japan or outside.
If they decided to send me abroad, is that legal or would my only choices be to accept or resign?
5 comments
The standard answer is to take the offer and start looking for something better. In fact, always be looking.
Are you a seishain? Wouldn’t harm to check your options with your local labor office or union, if you have one. You may be entitled to stay on current terms and therefore negotiate a severance payment.
Mandatory overtime is legal if an employee representative from the office signs off on the Article 36 Agreement. If you’re joining an existing office, they probably have one in place already for this year (it’s renewed annually). There are additional legal limits to overtime like 15h/week and 360h/year but those wouldn’t apply to you.
Sending you abroad is legal, especially if it’s written in the contract you’re about to sign. That’s the trade-off for job security. You can try to fight it if it’s not justified by business requirements (e.g., they’re using it as retaliation against you) or you have reasons like an only child taking care of a sick parent in Japan.
See a lawyer about your rights. Several years ago the company I worked for was acquired. The new owners made the rounds bullying people into signing new contracts accepting lesser conditions. I and another person refused to sign the new contract. We were fired. We sued for wrongful dismissal. We won and since the company didn’t want troublemakers like us back, they wound up paying us close to 2 years pay not to come back. Always check your rights before signing anything and get a verified translation if you’re signing something in Japanese.
Try and negotiate something different. If they say no, they say no. It can’t hurt to ask.
Or you could be sneaky and make changes to the contract paper yourself like 9am to 6pm, 1 hour lunchtime, no mandatory overtime. Just do the 2 lines through the parts you don’t like, hanko/sign each change, and send it off. If HR accepts it without checking, which is very possible if there are lots of documents coming in with the change, the contract is valid and they can’t retaliate against you as you both agreed to it. If they catch it, just say you changed it to meet your current schedule or something? May be retaliation there though so it’s up to you if you want to take the risk.