Work and employment

The legal minimum for working conditions: working hours, breaks and days off, leave, wages and notice of dismissal.

The rules of the individual labor contract: how it is formed and changed, and when a dismissal is void.

Balanced treatment for part-time and fixed-term workers: no unreasonable gap in pay and other treatment between them and the employer's workers with a standard employment status, an explanation of any gap on request, a way into standard employment, and help from the director of the prefectural labour bureau in settling disputes.

Fair dealing for self-employed people and one-person companies with no employees who take on work from businesses: terms stated in writing or electronically, payment on time, no unfair treatment, and a working environment free of harassment, among other rules.

It guarantees low-paid workers a lowest wage, set by the hour, that their employer must pay: one for every region of Japan and, for some businesses or occupations, a higher one.

Leave and working arrangements that let a worker raising a child or caring for a family member keep their job: childcare leave, caregiver leave, days off to look after a child or a family member, limits on overtime and night work, shorter hours, and the measures employers must take.

Protection for workers' pay when a business fails or a worker leaves: when an employer goes bankrupt or another event a Cabinet Order sets happens, the government pays unpaid wages within a range a Cabinet Order sets; the employer owes interest on wages still unpaid after a worker leaves; and workers' savings an employer holds as deposits must be safeguarded.

Sets out the State's labor policy and gives employers a set of duties: equal chances regardless of age in recruitment, reports on the foreign nationals they hire or lose and on large job losses, and measures against harmful conduct at work by someone in a superior position (commonly called power harassment).

It bans discrimination by sex at work, from recruitment to dismissal, protects women workers from dismissal for marrying and from dismissal or other disadvantage over pregnancy and childbirth, and makes employers act against sexual harassment at the workplace.

Keeps older people in work: it sets 60 as the lowest mandatory retirement age as a rule, makes employers whose retirement age is under 65 take measures to keep workers employed until 65, asks employers to try to secure work until 70, and supports older job seekers and retirees, including through Silver Human Resources Centers (シルバー人材センター).

It sets the share of people with disabilities that employers must employ, collects a levy from employers below a benchmark share to fund payments and grants to employers, bans disability discrimination at work and makes employers take measures suited to a person's disability, and organizes vocational rehabilitation.

The rules for businesses that send the workers they employ to work under another person's direction and for that person (worker dispatch, 労働者派遣), to keep that business properly run and to protect the dispatched workers and their employment.

How people find work and employers find workers: free job placement by public employment security offices (公共職業安定所), and rules that keep private placement agencies, recruitment, job-information services and worker supply properly run, so that each person has the chance of a job suited to their abilities and industry gets the workers it needs.

How collective labor disputes between employers and workers are prevented and settled: the parties' own duty to settle, help from the Labour Relations Commissions (労働委員会), and limits on strikes and other acts of dispute.

The protection of workers' freedom to form labor unions and bargain collectively with employers, with immunity for justifiable union action such as strikes; the unfair labor practices employers must not commit; and the collective agreements unions sign with employers or their organizations.

How the state helps settle a dispute between an individual worker and an employer — or between a job seeker and an employer over recruitment and hiring — promptly and properly, in line with its actual circumstances: information and consultation, advice and guidance from the Director of the Prefectural Labour Bureau, and, except for recruitment and hiring, mediation (あっせん) by a Dispute Coordinating Committee.

A quick procedure in the district court for a civil dispute between an individual worker and an employer over whether a labor contract exists or another matter of their working relationship: on a party's petition, a panel of one judge and two people with expert knowledge of labor relations tries mediation where a settlement looks possible and, if the dispute is not resolved that way, decides it.

Safety and health at work: what employers must do to prevent workers being injured, falling ill or dying because of their work — the safety and health staff and committees a workplace needs, measures against hazards and medical checkups — and controls on making and supplying machines and chemicals.

The profession of the labor and social security attorney (社会保険労務士) — the "public consultant on social and labour insurance" of this Act's English title — who handles papers and gives advice under Japan's labor and social insurance Acts: what the labor and social security attorney may do, how one qualifies and registers, their duties and discipline, and their corporations and associations.

What employers and the national and local governments must do so that women who work, or want to, can use their abilities fully at work: action plans with goals in figures, published figures on women at work such as the gender pay gap, and certification for employers that do well.

Measures to help children be born and raised in good health as Japan's birth rate falls fast, chiefly through action plans by local governments and by employers, including plans that help workers balance their working and family lives.

Protects people who report wrongdoing under certain laws at the business they work for — workers, dispatched workers and company officers among them — from dismissal and other disadvantageous treatment for reporting, and sets what businesses and administrative bodies must do with such reports.