Companies’ legal requirements often differ according to the number of regularly-employed workers; for example, companies with at least 10 regularly-employed workers are required to submit Work Rules to the labor standards inspection office, while organizations with 50 or more employees have to set up a health committee. This article explains about the number of regularly-employed workers in different labor laws and regulations.
[1] Labor Standards Act
Article 9 of the Labor Standards Act defines “worker” as “a person who is employed at a business or office and to whom wages are paid, regardless of the type of occupation.” This includes workers hired on a day-to-day basis and part-timers.
With this in mind, companies have to count regularly-employed workers, based on their employment situations. Companies do not have to consider cases where workers are hired on an ad-hoc basis or a temporary staff shortage, but part-timers should be included in the headcount, unless they are hired only temporarily.
[2] Industrial Safety and Health Act
The definition of workers is basically the same as the Labor Standards Act. Since the law is aimed to protect safety and health of all workers, employers have to include workers dispatched from staffing agencies in regularly employed workers. If a company has 45 employees and 5 dispatched workers, the number of regularly-employed workers is 50, making it necessary for the company to appoint health managers.
[3] Employment of workers with disabilities
If the number of regularly-employed workers is 43.5 or more, the company is legally required to hire at least one employee with disabilities. Regularly employed workers in this case means employees with 20 or more standard work hours per week and are expected to be employed for more than a year. An employee who works 30 hours or more per week is counted as 1, while workers whose work weekly hours are 20 hours or more and less than 30 hours are counted as 0.5.
[4] In relation to laws supporting child-rearing workers and women
“Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-generation Children” and “Act on the Promotion of Women’s Active Engagement in Professional Life” require companies with at least 101 regularly-employed workers to submit a “general employer action plan.” The headcount in this case includes workers under non-fixed term employment and workers who have been employed over the past year or are expected to be employed for more than a year.
Counting methods are different depending on the purposes. Employers should also be careful if the employee count means the number of each office or the entire company. Please check the rules carefully and ensure the numbers are counted correctly.
[Reference]
Labour Ministry “How to count regularly employed workers in determining the company size”
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_09985.html
Japan Organization for Employment of the Elderly, Persons with Disabilities and Job Seekers
https://www.jeed.go.jp/disability/q2k4vk000002t1yo-att/q2k4vk000003p1yn.pdf
Labour Ministry, pamphlet on the Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-generation Children
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/koyou_roudou/koyoukintou/pamphlet/26.html
The information is valid of the creation of this article.
