Have you ever taken paid vacation? Is the university student's part-time job environment "illegal"?

Under such circumstances, many students who work part-time do not necessarily have sufficient knowledge of law. There are many cases where they are working in a difficult working environment.

Rikkyo University Law Department Consumer Law Seminar (Koichi Hosokawa, Lecturer Koichi Hosokawa) researched the actual conditions of three points: notices of working conditions for student part-time jobs, payment of wages for overtime hours, and acquisition of paid holidays.

Notification of working conditions

Article 15 of the Labor Standards Act stipulates that "when concluding a labor contract, the employer shall provide the worker with wages, working hours and other working conditions." In this case, matters concerning wages and working hours and other matters specified by Ordinance of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare shall be specified by the method specified by Ordinance of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare." (including fax and e-mail from April 2019).

However, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's 2015 survey on part-time job awareness among university students, 1,000 students experienced a total of 1,961 part-time jobs. No,” he replied. Among them, 19.1% of all part-time workers did not recall receiving a specific verbal explanation of their working conditions.

In response to this survey, the Hosokawa seminar also took a questionnaire to 74 students. As a result, it was found that 13 people, or about 18%, did not receive the notice of working conditions.

Furthermore, in this questionnaire survey, we obtained a total of 10 notices of working conditions from students working part-time and verified the contents. Most of them were just "according to the law and employment regulations" and did not provide detailed information. Also, there were some documents that did not mention paid holidays, and even if there were, the provisions were difficult to understand.

Wages are basically paid in one-minute increments

Article 24 of the Labor Standards Act (full payment of wages) stipulates that "wages must be paid in full directly to the worker in currency." No (hereinafter omitted)”, and from this interpretation it is supposed to be paid in units of one minute.

However, according to administrative notices, if fractions of less than 1 hour occur when calculating overtime hours per month, fractions of less than 30 minutes are rounded down, and 30 minutes or more are rounded up to 1 hour. Accepted for the sake of convenience.

When we surveyed 201 part-time university students about the actual wage payment, we were able to hear about various actual wage calculations for part-time jobs (types of part-time jobs are shown in parentheses).

When we investigated the unit time of wage payment, we found that 15-minute units accounted for the majority, almost lining up with 1 minute. There was also an answer in units of 30 minutes. This seems to be the reason why wages are not properly paid for actual working hours.

However, there is no problem with dividing the work into 15-minute increments as long as the wages properly reflect the working hours. The problem is the rounding off of working hours (for example, unpaid wages for less than 15 minutes even if overtime is worked for 14 minutes).

This photo is a timecard record for a coffee shop that divides the working day into 15-minute increments. The hours in parentheses are actually paid as wages. I should have left for work at 13:53, but at 14:00. I should have left work at 22:49, but it turned out to be 45 minutes, and a total of 11 minutes has disappeared.

From the business side, it seems that ``the record of the time card does not properly reflect the start and end of actual work'', but if that happens, there will be no means to grasp working hours. . The 11 minutes above is the actual working time under the manager's control.

Are there paid holidays for part-time workers?

Part-time workers are also given paid vacations in accordance with Article 39 of the Labor Standards Act, just like regular employees. It stipulates that “an employee who has worked continuously for six months from the date of employment and has attended work for 80% or more of all working days shall be given paid leave for ten consecutive or divided working days.” It is

Like full-time employees, this basically applies to part-time workers whose prescribed weekly working hours are 30 hours or more or whose weekly prescribed working days are 5 days or more. Some students may not be enough. There is a thing called "proportional grant".

Applies to part-time workers and part-timers who work less than 30 hours a week and work less than 4 days a week. For example, if the prescribed number of working days per week is 3 days, if you work 80% of the total number of prescribed working days, you will be given 5 days of paid leave after half a year.

So, are you actually using your paid vacation appropriately? When 124 students who have worked for six months or longer were asked whether they have ever taken leave, 74% answered "no" and 26% answered "yes."

When we asked those who had paid leave but never took it why, we got the following answers (since April 2019, workers with more than 10 days of paid leave have taken 5 days off). employers are obliged to take one day of paid leave).

We also asked students about their attitudes toward paying wages. More than half of the respondents answered that they "don't think anything in particular," even though it wasn't in one-minute increments. It seems that they take it for granted that overtime work within the prescribed unit time will be free work. This awareness is also a problem.

I asked the Tokyo Labor Bureau about this situation, but they said, ``It is difficult to give uniform guidance and on-site inspections to all business owners,'' and said, ``If there is an illegal situation, please report it.'' That's what it means.

If you want to improve illegal conditions, you should speak up for yourself. In other words, part-time students must become "active workers."

Problems on the Employer Side

Regarding the actual status of delivery of notices of working conditions, etc., according to a survey by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 58.7% of cases did not receive them, and 18% of seminar surveys. As long as it is required by law, it should be a situation where everyone is issued, but it is not being implemented. This is probably the biggest problem.

There is room for improvement in the description. For example, with regard to paid leave, many contracts simply state, "Granted in accordance with Article 39 of the Labor Standards Act." Isn't this too unkind? The law is not uniformly understood by all workers.

Actually, if we weren't in law school, we wouldn't have even noticed. I made him sign the contract with nothing but inorganic words such as obeying the law, and I didn't tell him anything if he didn't tell me.

For example, if you continue to work under the working conditions of the person at the time of the employment contract, you will be given a number of days in half a year. Mandatory presentation should be made to create an environment in which it is easy to make claims and ensure that workers and business owners are well informed.

Regarding the unit time of wage payment, as mentioned above, it does not immediately become a problem that it is not in units of one minute, but it tends to lead to the truncation of working hours that are less than the unit time.

Actually, as long as there are many voices from students that they are truncated, it is true that there are many such companies. We need to change the system so that we are paid for what we work.

Improving these problems one by one will be a step toward creating a healthy working environment, and will lead to the realization of a society where it is easy to work. Awareness of workers' rights is important, but it is also necessary to raise awareness by the government and strengthen the obligation of businesses to provide information.

(Interviewed and written by Keisuke Kawada, Tatsuya Kitamura, Risa Shimokawachi)