Power Harassment – Draft Guidelines Announcement

During the most recent sitting of the Diet the enacted changes to the Labor Laws that have received the most attention is with regard to Power Harassment. The amended and now entitled “Comprehensive Promotion of Labour Policy, Stabilisation of Workers’ Employment and Improvement of Work Life Act※”  (previously the Employment Measures Act) includes additions regarding the prevention of Power Harassment, and as per Article 30-2 of this law, employment management measures are required by Employers. In addition, Article 33 states that breaches to Article 30-2 could result in the authorities making official and formal recommendations such that should these recommendations be ignored the Employer could be publicly named.

The changes to this law take effect from June 1, 2020 (April 1, 2022 for small and medium sized organizations). Power Harassment (Pawa-Hara in Japanese) is a term that all should now be quite familiar with, however prescribing Power Harassment in the law and requiring companies to prevent its occurrence is actually what is yet to come. The Ministry of Health Welfare and Labor released an advisory on November 20 this year and is now collecting public comments. They plan to release the guidelines in January 2020.

When looking at the Ministry of Health Welfare and Labor’s data regarding individual labor dispute cases in 2018, the Labor Bureau dealt with a record 1,118,000 individual dispute cases related to of bullying and harassment which is more than one million cases each year for three consecutive years. Bully and Harassment are not limited to Power Harassment, but could also include sexual and maternity harassment.

Triggered by the Power Harassment Guidelines to be announced in January 2020, we recommend that you review your own polices from the perspective of preventing harassment in general, not only power harassment.

Note: When the guidelines are released PMP will comment in a new PMP news.

※This translation is PMP’s translation. The official translation of the amended law is yet to be released and hence the official title is still unknown.