human resource management keiichiro hamaguchi. chapter 5 employment contract and work rules
TRANSCRIPT
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Human Resource ManagementKeiichiro HAMAGUCHI
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Chapter 5
Employment Contractand Work Rules
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(1) Employment Contract
• Written contracts with detailed working conditions prescription are rare.
• The conditions in work rules become content of the contract.
• Place and type of work is not specified in contract, and employers reserve the right to deploy workers unilaterally.
• Nissan Murayama Plant case (Supreme Court) confirmed it.
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(2) Work Rules
• Employer with 10+ employees must draw up work rules.
• Employer must consult majority union or majority representative, but consent is not required.
• Employment contract inferior to work rules is replaced with the latter.
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(a) Doctrine on “Reasonable Modification” of Work Rules
• “Reasonable modification” of the work rules has a binding effect on all workers, including those who opposed the modification (The Shuhoku Bus case).
• The doctrine is based on concerns of employment security and necessity of adjusting working conditions.
• Flexible modification of working conditions compensates for the lack of external flexibility.
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(b) Criteria for “Reasonableness”
• Other than disadvantage to workers and compensatory measures, the consent of majority union is important criteria for the “reasonableness” (The Daishi Bank case).
• Supreme court does not always respect majority union’s consent (The Michinoku Bank case).
• Report of the Study Group on Labor Contract Legislation advocated that “disadvantageous modification of work rules accepted by majority union should be regarded as reasonable.
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(3) Collective Agreement
• Collective agreement concluded between employer and trade union has normative effect on individual contract.
• Employment contract inferior to collective agreement is replaced with the latter.
• Collective agreement with one trade union applies to the members of the union, not to the members of other unions.
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(a) Enterprise-level Bargainingand Work Rules
• Almost all collective agreements in Japan are concluded at the enterprise level.
• Normative effect of collective agreement invalidates not only disadvantageous but also advantageous contracts.
• Collective agreements take priority over work rules.
• When both sides cannot reach agreement, employer can change the work rules unilaterally.
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(b) Plural Unionism and Establishment of Uniform Working Conditions
• Japan has no exclusive representation principle.• Even if a company has majority union, minority
unions or outside unions have full bargaining and strike right.
• To establish uniform working conditions, employer first concludes collective agreement with the majority union, then modify the work rules according to the collective agreement.
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(4)Flexible Regulation of Working Conditions and the Long-Term Employment System
• Combination of empty individual contract, reasonable modification of work rules and company-level agreement enables flexible adjustment of terms and conditions of work.
• Flexible work conditions reflect difficulty of dismissals in long-term employment system.
• “Functional flexibility” in Japan vs. “numerical flexibility” in US.
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(5) Modification of Individual Working Conditions
• In case of contract specifying place and type of work, flexible modification is difficult.
• Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS) case introduce a notion of a dismissal to change working conditions.
• Report of the Study Group on Labor Contract Legislation advocated new system for the modification of individual working conditions, which provides a third choice for employees: acceptance of a modification proposal with the reservation.