TOKYO, Nov. 5, 2020—Rarely has Japan’s top court revealed the nature of its deliberations and shortness of independence from legislature and administration, aka, bureaucracy, so nakedly than in the recent two labor cases.
On Oct. 13, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal of non-regular (contract) workers of the Osaka Medical College Hospital demanding that, based on the the labor law that provides same work same pay requirements, the pay gaps between them and regular workers be corrected and that the non-regular workers be treated equally by paying them bonuses as for regulars. (Article 20 of the labor contract law)
The court decided that regular workers are hired and paid bonuses for stable labor provisioning – meaning non-regular workers are meant as labor forces to supplement labor shortages.
On Oct. 15, the top court ruled that Japan Post violated the labor contract law for discriminating against contract workers by not providing paid leaves, holiday work, family and other allowances.
By nature, the bottom-line demands in the two cases are for equal worker treatment under the same work same pay principle guaranteed by law, yet the top court intentionally interpreted relevant laws
for differing reasons:
Japan Post’s mail delivery service for one has been affected by chronic labor shortages that a further worker shortage could threaten its existence. Japan Post non-regular workers total more than 180,000, or nearly one-half of its total workforce.
The reason why the court struck down the Osaka hospital workers’ demand is that upholding it would become a precedent in igniting similar demands in other same work same pay cases as well as pre-trial cases, forcing the state to give the same benefits and treatment to more than 20 million non-regular workers in Japan.
The two cases were more than a mouthful for the Japanese top court to handle in magnitude, and thus its judges must have made the decisions by contacting or implicitly communicating with the prime minister’s office, ministries concerned where bureaucrats consider day to day business, and even the ruling political party.
This is a reason why, unlike the U.S. supreme court, Japanese top court decisions list names of judges that dissent and their names are not recognized by the public. And it’s the way how the ruling party and the legislature want the top court to be.
In a similar vein, Japanese lawyers act as much like as supreme court judges in handling their clients. While doctors may gawking at the PC monitor, not the face and body, in examining the patient, Japanese lawyers look around the court room to see whether their law school necktie connection seniors and juniors are there on the justice bench or the other side of the case before taking up cases. If he/she finds one, then the lawyer would make adjustments, if not making outright coordination with his/her counterpart.
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