'Equal Pay for Equal Work'

I was most interested in Makiko Inoue and Ben Dooley's article for The New York Times published on November 27, 2020. Titled 'A Job for Life, or Not? A Class Divide Deepens in Japan', it investigates the growing inequality within the country when it comes to permanent jobs and benefits.

The article discusses about work contracts in Japan, hiring practices and employment pensions, benefits and bonus payouts. It explores how 'two court rulings threaten to further entrench distinctions in Japan between “regular” workers and the growing ranks of nonregular employees, many of whom are women.' The lawsuit filed and mentioned belonged to namely 54-year-old Ms Setsuko Hikita, an ex-employee of Metro Commerce, of which the details we'll flag out later. 

The second lawsuit belongs to Ms Kamada Yukio, a secretary (also in her 50s) who worked full time at Osaka Medical College but on a non-regular contract demanded better compensation and argued on the premise of 'equal pay for equal work'. Osaka High Court awarded her due salary and benefits as the other employees who did similar work. However, this lawsuit went to the Supreme Court. Ultimately she lost her lawsuit in October 2020 when the Supreme Court overturned the Osaka High Court's ruling to award her 60% of standard bonuses distributed to regular employees.  

This article highlights Ms Setsuko Hikita's 2014 case against Metro Commerce. She joined them at age 54, earning 1000 yen an hour. Ten years later, she made 1050 yen an hour. She hadn't seen sizeable pay rise or benefits. Six years had passed since she filed the lawsuit, along with three other employees. In October 2020, she still got nothing. Japan's Supreme Court's verdict favored Metro Commerce. The company is under no obligations to provide Ms Hikita or her ex colleagues with the identical lump sum retirement allowance which it gave her colleagues who did similar work.When we read it, it sounds highly unfair, to bind her to such an unequal contract, made all the more painful when the laws deny her what has been due to her for a decade's of dedication to her job. 

Over a 10-year period, Ms. Hikita earned about $90,000 less than many of her co-workers, and she was denied benefits like a retirement allowance. It wasn’t because they had more experience or were more competent. It was just that they had lifetime employment status and she did not.

So Ms. Hikita sued. Last month, after more than six years, the country’s Supreme Court rendered a verdict: Her employer was under no obligation to provide her with the same retirement allowance — a lump-sum payment on leaving the company — it gave colleagues who did identical work.

Aside from unfair pay practices, Japan also has a humongous gender wage gap divide. It stands at 24.8% in 2018. Its gender wage gap is the second largest among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, surpassed only by South Korea. However, it's more than just gender wage gap that Japanese men and women have to contend with. It is this contractual thing of being a regular and non-regular employee that makes people feel that they have been severely shortchanged. The country's labor laws don't seem to want to rectify that. 

Concerns about the precarious state of nonregular workers long predate the pandemic.

Employers have for years chipped away at the system of lifetime employment that evolved in Japan after World War II, arguing that increased flexibility to hire and fire employees will increase economic efficiency. Now, nearly 37 percent of the country’s labor force, or more than 20.6 million workers, are nonregular employees, according to the latest government statistics, up from around 16 percent in the early 1980s.

Among Japanese women in the work force, more than half are nonregular employees — an example of the limits of Japan’s push in recent years to elevate women in the workplace, a program known as womenomics.

In 2002, Singapore ratified the International Labour Organization’s Convention C100 (Equal Remuneration Convention) which calls for ‘equal remuneration between men and women workers for work of equal value’. Similarly, the Tripartite Alliance for Fair & Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) has advocated for the principle of 'equal pay for equal work. However, it is a point to note that we have no binding legislation determining that. We have the Employment Act, which barely protects salaried employees. As long as employers grant all employees the minimum standard required in the Employment Act, any disparity between employees shall be at the employer’s discretion, and the employees are free to take it to court, but they won't have much recourse. So you pretty much fight for your own benefits and salary, and annual increments. 

Singapore's public sector agencies and some companies pay Singaporean males slightly higher starting salaries as a 'compensation' for completing the mandatory National Service. The gender wage gap exists across global cities. Our adjusted gender pay gap in 2018 is 6.0%. We have a January 2020 paper released by the Ministry of Manpower on 'Singapore's Adjusted Gender Pay Gap'. The fairly comprehensive paper isn't too long, totaling 36 pages. 

This is the unexplained component from the decomposition, which is the remaining gender pay gap between men and women employees after adjusting for both human capital and labour market factors where data was available.

The adjusted gender pay gap of 6.0% is lower when compared with results for similar studies done for USA (8.0%), Canada (7.7% - 8.3%) and China (18.3%). It has narrowed from 8.8% in 2002.