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Japanese court hears case on 'paternity harassment'

23 Comments
By Yuri Kageyama

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23 Comments
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I hope he wins! These corporations say one thing, yet do something very different, and they KNOW for the most part, that their employees are not going to bitch or complain. This time is different, and kudos to the guy for taking this step!

22 ( +24 / -2 )

Lets see of the court has the moxie to stand up to Japan Inc. by enforcing the law. I'm not holding my breath given the rank incompetence of the Japanese "justice" system.

15 ( +15 / -0 )

Asics denies any wrongdoing, arguing it changed the man's job to best suit what it characterized as a difficult employee.

Well, to them, he most likely was difficult. Workers who stand up for their rights are difficult for many Japanese companies to deal with, since it doesn't happen often.

That doesn't mean they were justified.

20 ( +20 / -0 )

Go foreigners! Pull Japan kicking and screaming in to the modern world!

3 ( +10 / -7 )

Hold on. We don't know the company labelled the man 'difficult' because he excercised his right to paternity leave.

We don't know.

We suspect. With good reason.

But I will wait until I learn more of the facts.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

"It's violating their constitutional rights”

Obviously it isn’t.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

Just curious. Do workers in Japan get compassionate and bereavement leave or long service leave?

In where I live employees are entitled to eight and two thirds weeks of long service leave upon the completion of at least 10 years of continuous employment with their employer. On top of this, they are entitled to four and one third weeks for each additional five years of service after the initial 10 years.

My wife has worked for the same company for over 20 years. She can take a very long 4 month holiday (if approved by her boss) when she use all her annual leave and long service leave together!

8 ( +8 / -0 )

I would take pay to sit and do little, live it up man!

-4 ( +5 / -9 )

Being moved because of a shoulder injury sure complicates matters for him. How many companies would have just fired him if he could not do the work?

-10 ( +2 / -12 )

Go foreigners! Pull Japan kicking and screaming in to the modern world!

Huh? This guy is Japanese...

11 ( +11 / -0 )

Well it is sales and marketing position, does everyone really expect the company to wait for him for a year.

While most people might think it is their right to keep the same job then try 5 taking maternity and paternity from the same department, the company needs to sustain.

So when the 5 returns are they to keep 10 employees for that department.

Unless you are willing to be flexible to work partially during the leave I don't see most companies having the resource to provide the same flexibility of having a empty positions for a year.

However the company needs to make clear that roles may change after paternity leave base on the company's needs.

For alternatives, contract workers would fit the criteria of covering the role to his return.

-13 ( +2 / -15 )

But the country's declining birthrate has led the government to consider making parental leave mandatory for both parents to try to counter that tendency.

To consider? It should be enforced in the first place!

They only realize this by the time the realize have no enough workforce and people to pay pension fund.

10 ( +10 / -0 )

Well it is sales and marketing position, does everyone really expect the company to wait for him for a year.

Of course. That's what paternity leave is.

Companies depend upon humanity to survive as companies. If there are no humans, there are no companies. The idea that therefore companies shouldn't make an effort to support that part of humanity as ethical business is ridiculous. However, companies that focus more on profit than ethics will not give paternity leave. Society has determined that is ethically unacceptable, and created laws to enforce it.

So yes, we do expect the company to make concessions for a year.

18 ( +19 / -1 )

What this case PROVES beyond a DOUBT is asics is CRAP at managing its OWN COMPANY!! PERIOD! Incompetent!!

Our couple is only 12 people, one woman in the office took maternity leave, we hired a person to cover, so IT COST us but we got through it. She is now going to have baby #2 so the woman taking leave is now training her 2nd replacement......again WE WILL survive this.

A bit hard on the bottom line but if our tiny office can do this surely asics can!

15 ( +15 / -0 )

Did he hurt his shoulder rubbing it against the athletes? Must have been rugby players.

@ksteer

Huh? This guy is Japanese...

The NYT, a regular Japan critic, actually reports two such cases are ongoing, the other being an American, Glen Wood, who was a managing director for global sales in the Tokyo office of Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities bank.

Obligatory long hours have got to stop too.

“This is about harassing people for trying to spend time with their family and forcing men to marry their companies instead of their family,” said Mr. Wood.

He said: “We need to assure that there’s work-life balance so that children can spend time with their parent and parents can spend time with their children. That has to be recognized as a universal human right.”

The lawyer makes a good point.

“In Japan, there are a lot of good laws on the books,” said Mr. Imaizumi. “But the problem is that few laborers exercise their rights under the law. We need some courageous people to exercise their rights and stand up in society.”

Japanese law grants both men and women up to one year of leave from work after having a child. Parents are not guaranteed pay from their employer, but are eligible for government benefits while off. However, only 5% of eligible fathers took paternity leave in 2017,

4 ( +4 / -0 )

I don't see most companies having the resource to provide the same flexibility of having a empty positions for a year.

Funny, in places that are not Japan it's done and works just fine. Employees on leave are covered by term-specific, contracted workers to fill the empty spot. Then when the leave is up the employee returns to his or her job. That works for various kinds of leaves--maternity, paternity, bereavement, study or sabbatical.

10 ( +10 / -0 )

Oh yeah, and sick leave as well as long term disability as required....

9 ( +9 / -0 )

Good luck mate, sadly you gonna need it.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Good luck to him.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

OK ...

@Kag

I don't see most companies having the resource to provide the same flexibility of having a empty positions for a year.

To a degree I agree with you. It's a problem were you have so many small manufacturing companies supplying larger ones on Kanban/Just In Time (JIT) bases.

But the predominant large corporations have so much over-employment that it would not be difficult. They could be a lot more flexible and efficient.

I met some guys from a German company that bought out a Japanese manufacturing company in Japan once and were doing amazing things. One of their big things was "everyone goes home at 5pm on Friday" and has a weekend meaning also that the work also had to get done.

Their big criticism of the J-corporate scene was the amount of time and energy wastes on consensus seeking meetings which were actually really consensus enforcing meetings and they made a real effort to speed that up using their model which was, from memory, small groups working together getting things done and people actually speaking their mind and making open criticisms in meetings. The latter was a big culture shock.

As for big corporations, they appear to spend the first 1/3rd of one's career destroying any personal identity and independence moving people around at random from positions/departments/places, and make these utterly unreasonable demands of time and commitment that were not even really productively efficient, then the second 1/3rd destroying any possibility of family life.

Sometimes I felt I got to spend more times with company wives than they got to spend with their husbands ...

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I don't know. If a defendant such as Asics tells the court this..."Asics denies any wrongdoing, arguing it changed the man's job to best suit what it characterized as a difficult employee."

Than I suspect they have just admitted to guilt.

Reason: The employee followed the law and took paternity leave. This hardly characterizes him as being a "difficult employee"

If this were the case, then Asics can also say the Justice System of Japan is being a difficult body of laws.

I am the CEO of my own sportswear company. What Asics needs to learn, "or at least its officers," is that it is the people who make the company and if those individuals love the company.... so might their children.

Cheers!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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