Hello Everyone,
I am working for a Japanese company which has the following rules
1. About 50,000 yen for overtime work is included in the monthly salary.
If I don’t work overtime, I get this fixed amount every month. However, if I deduct this overtime pay from my monthly salary, I only get 2,00,000(20万) yen per month.
So my concern is that I am working almost 15 hours of overtime every month. But my company never pays this amount and says that the overtime pay is already included in my salary amount.
Has anyone else had this kind of experience? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you.
11 comments
Yes, this is called みなし残業 and is very common in both Japanese companies and gaishikei alike.
Doing some quick calculations, your base pay is 200,000 per month, making your base hourly wage approximately 1200 yen, and your overtime hourly (1.25 hourly) is about 1500 yen per hour. So your 250,000 per month includes up to 33.3 hours of overtime.
It’s legal, but it’s a shit wage – minimum wage in Tokyo is ~~961~~ *1,072* yen per hour for reference.
Edit: Correcting miniimum wage. And note that McDonald’s pays 1,153 yen per hour to start, and actually do pay overtime. So OP is being paid roughly the same as a burger flipper.
Considering your base salary and the overtime included money, I think you have 40hours of overtime included in your whole package (40h being the maximum that can be included to a salary)
Which means you are gonna get overtime money after 40hours overtime, so starting the 41h overtime per month.
Next time you are changing company, make sure of how many hours of overtime money is included with the HR before signing the contract
It’s just a glorified way for companies to make you work longer for a shit wage. Even if you don’t “work the overtime hours,” your base salary is already so low that the company loses nothing. For your next job, make sure the expected overtime hours + the compensation actually *add* to a livable base salary and *is not a part of it.*
This is a system called deemed overtime (みなし残業), which is not uncommon, especially in the IT field.
* The overtime is paid monthly for a pre-determined number of hours (whether or not the overtime is actually worked).
* The number of hours varies from company to company. Usually it is between 20 and 50 hours.
* Of course, if you work overtime in excess of these hours, you will be paid additional overtime.
* The contract you signed when you joined the company should have clearly stated how many hours it is. In most cases, the job application text will also state this.
In other words, you should have been able to determine in advance whether the “if I deduct this overtime pay from my monthly salary” was reasonable or not.
Unfortunately, if you signed the contract then you obliged to that arrangement and it’s kinda “too little, too late” now to be mad about it.
You can either try and get another contract drafted for you (Highly unlikely they will oblige) OR you can look for a new job and **READ THE DAMN CONTRACT** before you sign it.
Either way, best of luck to you.
P.S: **Remember to read ALL Contracts IN FULL people. Especially the** ***SMALL*** **texts; Those are almost ALWAYS the MOST important to read.**
Sounds completely legal to me. You can only really fight a 固定残業代 if the terms are super unreasonable like only 5,000 yen for 40 hours but I assume it’s 50,000 for 40 hours which is considered “fair”
Honestly 50,000 on a base of 200,000 sounds like a super shitty gig but it’s legal.
Yeah, みなし残業 is pretty common. Companies will set the amount arbitrarily depending on how much they want to exploit you. So some will include 20 hours a month, others 40, and so on. Not-so-bad companies won’t say anything if you don’t meet these hours. Shit companies will berate you if you don’t work the minashi, since you’re technically being paid for it.
Most will say that any overtime over this amount will be paid, but it very rarely is in my experience.
Even if it’s stipulated in the contract, if your colleagues don’t notify the boss of their true working hours, they don’t get paid. If everyone does this, it’s very hard to be the only one that does, thus you won’t get paid either.
From my own experience – I’m on my third company right now, and am finally being paid for the hours I work. Overtime is calculated automatically from our clocking-in machine, and they actually pay it. My prior companies had the capability to do the same, the first even had a similar machine, but they just didn’t do it because they wanted to penny-pinch.
My advice would be, if you live in Tokyo and that’s your wage, Jesus you need to get out there. Stay as long as you need to make your CV nice and shiney, and leave for somewhere that actually respects your time and respects you as a worker.
Do not work overtime, it’s not worth it.
Never really had this and just curious but is みなし残業 part of you fixed income or is it an allowance?
I have worked as a recruiter for about 12 years now in Tokyo.
This is very common.
Basically the idea behind it is that it is very difficult to fire people in Japan so when they draft your offer letter they will “pre pay” your overtime.
What this actually is, is that they “categorize” your yearly salary into different categories and count that section of pay as “overtime pay” when in actuality it is simply being budgeted as part of your yearly salary regardless of if you work overtime or not.
Therefore if they don’t like you or want to fire you they will say that you no longer have to work overtime and they can legally deduct the “overtime pay” from your salary sometimes cutting your salary in half as a way to legally force you out.
It’s pretty nasty and very common.
The same applies for discretionary “summer/winter bonus” which in reality is just…… your yearly salary of which they also don’t have to pay.
Welcome to Japan!!!!!!!