A bill to revise the Special Act on Salaries of School Teachers was approved November 19 in the plenary session of the House of Representatives to be sent to the Upper House for further debates. It is to impose a flexible working hour system on public school teachers on a yearly basis. The system justifies fixing of a long-hour work practice to encourage this habit, a clear violation of the Labor Standard Law.

REVISION FOR WORSE TO TRIGGER MORE DEATHS FROM OVERWORK

School teachers are hard workers

The current parliamentary debates on introducing a flexible labor system to public school teachers undermine a principle of the Labor Standard Law. The revision may bring more deaths from overwork, or Karoshi. The system is to be applied on a yearly basis. The bill was voted in favor November 15 by the authority of Chairman of the Education and Science Committee of the House of Representatives in the absence of an agreement between the ruling and opposition parties.

Even according to surveys conducted by the Ministry of Education and Science, 60% of teachers of junior high schools and 30% of elementary schools endure a long-hour working practice. They work excessively, and the working hours reach the crucial line to provoke a death. The government’s ‘reform’ plan comes from the extremely serious labor situation of teachers, but its direction is completely adverse.

More than 17 thousand teachers took a leave of work for longer than a month due to diseases, among which over 8.5 thousand teachers had day-offs on account of psychological disorders. For ten years up to 2016 certified deaths due to overwork count 63.

A main reason lies in the number of teachers in the workplace that does not fit to a volume of work. An overwork payment program is absent for school teachers, and therefore, their working hours are not managed rightly.

Revision does not bring benefits to teachers

The revised law provides a 4% rise of teacher’s salary in the name of a rearrangement benefit, but no payment is made for overtime work. The altered law prohibits the school authority to order teachers to work overtime with exceptions of a field practice, a school event, a teachers’ meeting and responses to natural disasters.

Overtime work is not paid to school teachers. That means working hours are not controlled properly by the school authority, and therefore a small number of teachers involve in a big amount of work. Thus, long-time work habit prevails.

The law skips labor-management agreement

The Labor Standard Law stipulates eight-hour-work a day and 40-hour-work a week.

The flexible working hour system is approved as an exception of this law, which means to average total working hours flatly on the basis of a year, considering busy times and idle times. Thus, criticisms are aroused that the new system means ‘a fixed pay for unlimited labor’, or a means to evade the labor laws.

Currently public workers of local municipalities, including school teachers, are excluded from the flexible working hour system. The amendment allows extension of working hours during the school terms to facilitate teachers to have more day-offs in a package during summer vacations. Furthermore, the new law does not oblige an agreement to be concluded between the labor and the management.

A show of reduced working hours

The new flexible system pretends to reduce, ostensibly, overtime work-hours for teachers during busy times, lifting regulations on working hours set forth by the Labor Standard Law. It actually endangers a hard working environment of school teachers to cause a death from overwork.

The principle of Labor Standard Law lies in equality between the labor and the management. Fundamental labor rights are restricted for school teachers, or public workers. The revised law removes a labor-management agreement, failing the Labor Standard Law.

Renounce the revision! Real reform in working habits is needed for school teachers in compliance with the Labor Standard Law.

December 3, 2019