Working out the rules for paid holidays

If you’ve ever wondered what the rules are for holidays in Japan, look no further. I will try to give a run down on what’s normal and what the labor law says. As always, with articles like this, I encourage you to use the material as a guideline only, and seek proper legal advice before acting.

The Japanese labor law says that all full-time employees are due 10 days paid leave after they have satisfactorily finished 6 months of employment. “Satisfactory” usually means that they have attended the workplace for at least 80% of the required total workdays. So, even if you’ve been sick during your first six months, so long as you hit the 80%, you should be able to get your holiday allowance.

Once you receive the 10 days allowance, you are allowed to take this time off all at once, or to space it out until the next allocation, one year later (at the 18-month mark). My advice is that you always leave a couple of days unused, so that if you get sick, you have some paid days off to recover. Your holidays can typically be carried over two years. Check the Work Rules displayed at your office, or your own employment contract because some companies allow a longer period.

My advice on storing up some unused holidays implies that Japanese companies don’t give sick leave, and indeed many smaller firms don’t. Being paid to be sick is not a concept that traditional Japanese firms understand. However, recently in an effort to attract better employees, some larger firms and some multinationals are now starting to offer sick leave.

However, this is company-by-company and it is not a right. Often what I do in my firms is to give an extra three days holiday, which functions as a provision toward covering ordinary sickness. The only difference in our case is that we don't allow this extra three days to be carried over to the next year.

Annual holidays attract a special long service loading in Japan. For each year you serve, up to 6 1/2 years (typically), you get an extra day or two of holiday each year. Thus after 6 1/2 years, you can take up to 20 days paid leave a year. Beyond this term, some companies continue to add more days, but most cap it. 

A special note is that after you have been with a company more than 7 1/2 years, you can take up to 40 days paid leave in a single year. Clearly this would be in cases where you had paid leave carried over from a previous year because the company was too busy or had internal problems.

Can you take paid leave when you want? Or does the company have a right to tell you when to take it? My understanding is that in principle you can take the leave when and how you want, so long as you give your company sufficient notice. Usually one month is considered sufficient.

That said, there is a provision in the law that allows your company to postpone scheduled leave in times of hardship or difficulty for the firm. The question is whether or not a postponement would be seen as being reasonable or not, and I guess that is a question you’d have to take to the courts if push came to shove.

I don’t know of many companies that prevent employees from taking holidays; it’s a pretty fundamental right. The problem is usually the other way around, where traditionally minded Japanese staff don’t take the holidays owed them out of a feeling of duty to the company. Pressured managers in particular let their yearly leave allocations slide and expire. This obviously isn’t good for one’s mental health or family relationships and senior management need to be ready to persuade such valuable employees to take time off for their own good.

Other types of paid leave

Apart from your regular holiday allowance, while they are not legally required to do so, most Japanese companies also give employees Compassionate Leave, meaning paid and unpaid leave for life events, celebratory or otherwise. Clearly, many of the following events really are once-in-a-lifetime, and you seldom hear of a company trying to block them.

Celebratory events: Employees getting married typically receive 4-7 days paid leave. Most people I know take longer honeymoons than that, so any extra days off would be drawn from your regular paid leave allocation or be unpaid. Companies are not obliged to allow long honeymoons but many will accept up to 2-3 weeks. You may find, though, that you will be asked to move the honeymoon to a more convenient time, unless you make the request well in advance (i.e., at least three months).

You will also receive 1-2 days paid leave if your child gets married, or when your spouse gives birth.

Mourning: Just as life begins, so it ends, and companies will normally provide 2-7 days paid leave for the death of a parent, foster parent, spouse, child or foster child. They will also provide 2-3 days paid leave for you to attend the funeral of co-habiting grandparent, cohabiting parent-in-law, or a consanguineous sibling.

If you are non-Japanese, on hearing the above, you may think, “Wait a minute, my family is overseas, there is no way I can get back within few days.” Of course, most companies wrote their rules years ago when foreign employees were rare. So if you want more than the allowed paid leave, you either have to take some of those extra paid holidays I suggested that you save up, or you try for compassionate unpaid leave.

Again, there are not many companies that wouldn’t give you up to three weeks off work, unpaid, for deaths and marriages. They know that to enforce their rules so rigidly for such events would be tantamount to recruitment suicide if word got out.

Childbirth: Childbirth is considered as being within the control of the employee, so companies are not obligated to pay for such events, but they are required to keep the job open. By law, companies have to give six weeks leave before the birth and eight weeks after birth. Some companies encourage their new moms to take at least three months’ childcare leave, since this is the youngest age that mothers can put their babies into day care. The preferred time off for new moms who can afford it (i.e., they have a spouse), is up to one year.

I’ll just note that in addition to these continuous periods of leave, female employees who are having pre and post-birth medical health issues can also request unpaid leave for check-ups, doctor-mandated rest periods, and so on.

Beyond the most common requests, companies (of 10 or more people) are supposed to define in their work rules, the terms for an extended leave of absence. Typical reasons for wanting an extended leave of absence include:

— If you are sick because of injuries or illness sustained outside of work.

— If you need to take leave for two weeks or more due to family issues or other personal reasons.

— If your public duties interfere with your job role.

— If you are doing extended education (e.g., an MBA overseas).

In such circumstances, the typical allowances of time off for illness and injury are usually predicated on how long you’ve worked at the firm. Allowances differ for each company.

Where the reason for taking leave is more of personal choice, the same formula may be applied, or the company may alter the periods according to its decision. It’s important to know that apart from illnesses and injuries sustained at work, if you don’t come back to your job within the allowance periods defined by the company, and if the company won’t give you additional time, then you may be considered as having resigned from the job.

The best thing is to get things down on paper and signed by your boss or HR if you need to take an extended leave of absence. 

Terrie Lloyd writes a weekly newsletter for entrepreneurs and business people about business and political opportunities in Japan. You can find the newsletter at www.terrie.com. For further contact with Terrie, email him at terrie.lloyd@daijob.com.