April 4, 2017, is Equal Pay Day. Because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work longer for the same amount of pay. April 4 symbolizes when the typical woman’s earnings catch up to what a man earned the previous year, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE). The NCPE originated Equal Pay Day in 1996 as a public awareness campaign.

A number of changes to Japan’s labour laws took effect from today including a programme aimed at accepting more blue-collar workers from overseas.

Among the changes in Japan’s labour law revisions include an amendment to Japan’s “Equal Pay For Equal Work” which focuses on equal pay for equal work between regular and irregular (part-time employees, limited-term employees and dispatched workers) employees.

The amendments aim to eliminate unreasonable disparities in pay when compared with full-time staffers.

Whether the differences in pay are unjustified will be determined based on the job description, the possibility for job transfer and the work location, among other things. Employers are also required to explain the reasons for any differences upon an employee’s request. For dispatched workers, the staffing agency has a new requirement under the new law to provide a certain level of compensation to dispatched workers or to conclude any labour-management agreement covering the new statutory items.

For small employers, this change will instead take effect from 1 April 2020.

Also among the changes is a cap on overtime hours for large employers. A cap on overtime will be applied to small-and-midsized companies in April 2020. Under this law, overtime work hours cannot exceed 45 hours per month and 360 hours per year.

The revisions will also see changes to the country’s annual leave requirements. Under the new law, employees must take at least five days of annual leave if they have more than ten days of unused annual leave.

Meanwhile, to ease the country’s ongoing labour shortage, Japan will grant entry to an estimated 340,000 foreign workers in the next five years in 14 different fields including agriculture, nursing care, construction and more.

Other changes that will take effect from today include time tracking for all employees. Employers will be required to track working hours for all employees including exempt employees in order to protect each employee’s health.

The new amendments also create a new overtime exemption: highly-skilled professional. Those who fall within this category are not only exempt from overtime but also from the late-night allowance (pay for any work performed from 10 pm to 5 am). This exemption was created as a compromise to address the business need to ensure that certain positions remain flexible in terms of hours and pay especially for highly compensated employees.