“Black Company” is a sharp growing company in sunrise industries that force workers to over-labor by harassment, illegal labor and overwork etc.. and drives them into resignation one after another.
The antonym of “Black Company” is “White Company”. In the US a company which has very rough work environment is called “sweatshop” but Japanese “Black Company” is a word that indicates not only temp workers in a factory like “sweatshop” but also full-time worker.
Basically “Black Company” indicates a company that repeats illegal acts and has relation to antisocial groups such as Yakuza and mafia but now it indicates a company that ignores labor standard law and the related laws and regulations, elude the law and make a bad use of a defect of the law in order to force workers to do unpaid over time work.
I tried to collect 10 features of Japanese Black Company. Depending on the feature, there are arguments both pros and cons but I stand at the Japanese people’s viewpoint and I listed up really bad customs which are “generally” thought to be done in Black Companies in Japan.
If you work in Japanese company, the more number of these features your work environment applies to, with the higher probability you can recognize a company you work for can be “Black Company”
If your company applies to five or more features, you can say you work for “Black Company” with confidence.
Contents
- 1 10 outstanding features of “Black Company”
- 2 How to pierce if a company you apply for is “Black Company”
10 outstanding features of “Black Company”
1,Forcing spiritualism
“Black Company” tends to rely on spiritualism to control workers. “You can do it”, “Gratitude”, “Good Company” are its favorite phrases to lead worker’s depressed mind by long-hour hard working to positive way. People in management position have unconscious mind to use these phrases like
- You can do it …………Stop fooling about and get on with it right away!
- Gratitude ………… Do not complain about our company
- Good Company ………… We are company. Do not profit-and-loss arithmetic
In addition, a manager who supervises workers believe himself that they can manage to overcome any fatal situation if showing themselves at their best. In this way, there is a background that a management side tends to rely on instructing workers by fanatical spiritualism.
In the end, “doing the best” is automatically translated into “working long hour” and this recognition spread out around workers as common understanding on working the company.
2, Harassment
Harassment for a position of power is rampant around the office. You can be brainwashed that harassment is justifiable behavior to discipline workers. You are naturally said by your boss like “If you can’t finish off your work, don’t leave this room until it’s done” or “these bad sales results are all your fault! I will cut your salary off!!”
If you work without salary, you are simply slave.
3, Absolute monarchism
“Black Company” had rigid hierarchical relationships. What the boss and the president say are always absolute even if it is quite unreasonable order for you.
In Japanese society, the position of an organization is closely related to social position, which tends to allow a wrong hierarchical relationship that suppresses the freedom of workers’ opinions and accept only opinion of management side that is recognized as absolute order.
An exacting hierarchical relations not allowing different opinions from subordinates and withering workers away is obstruction against smooth communication between a boss and workers. In the end, the company that has such a culture tends to become absolute monarchism like “a manager’s opinion is company’s intention and infallibility” , “nobody fix wrong decision from the upper management” and “noticeable unusual event and bad changes that workers always feel is not reported to upper management.” This situation leads teams in an office to destruction.
Sooner or later, you feel discomfort to command system of a company, you should quit.
4, long hour hard working
If your company keep forcing you to work overtime for more than 45 hours a month, your company can be recognized as “Black Company”. In Japan, we have labor-management agreement named “article 36” which is notification of agreement on overtime and holiday work that protects us from working overtime for more than 45 hours monthly other than 8 hours which is legal working hours.
For example, if you work 6 days a week, your total legal working hours are 200 to 216 hours a weak and if averaging 45 hours into your total working day, you will have to work for 1.7 hours to 2 hours after every single regular working hours. The Japanese government recognize this as illegal
In other words, legal line that allows companies to force workers over time work is 1 hour a day if workers work overtime every day, which means overtime should be 25 to 27 hours a month.
Of course, sharp growth companies don’t comply this agreement perfectly by taking the government at its word and they are excited over finding a loophole of this legal agreement.
They try to save their appearance that there is no overtime work on numerical reports to appeal the government to comply the agreement.
Black Companies always bring pressure on workers that it labels as a good-for-nothing to workers who can’t finish assigned tasks within regular working hours, even recognizing it gives the amount of tasks that is impossible for anyone to finish within the day and it expresses its views that workers work overtime at their own discretion even though it doesn’t admit overtime work.
Black companies don’t accept overtime on public so that they try to hide its actual condition by not paying overtime fee to workers to indicate time management to finish all the tasks on time is worker’s responsibility.
5, Few holidays
If you take days off as on the calendar’s holidays, you can have 120 holidays straight annually in Japan. In addition, average number of annual holidays of a company that provides to workers is also 120 days. If dividing 120 days by total months, you can have holidays for 10 days a month, which means 2 days off a week. A company providing holidays this much is extremely a superior company that per-man productivity is pretty high and can generate sufficient profit to take care of labor’s environment.
A company that provides only 100 holidays to workers is relatively normal in Japan. The criterion of the number of holidays that a company is recognized as “Black Company” is 80 days which is whether you can get one day off a week or not.
If the number of holidays goes below 80 days, a company is likely to suffer from manpower shortage but not to hire anyone because of avoiding financial burdens. Workers are always tried and unmotivated, which makes per-man productivity go worse and worse. Moreover, the perfection of every single tasks is very poor. This negative chain brings out credit uncertainty.
6, A low salary
In the old days, when Japan’s period of rapid economic growth, there was a mood that accepted harsh working style all day long like companies encouraged workers to work harder and longer than anyone else and there was no one to criticize this phenomenon all over Japan. CEOs mercilessly woke sleeping subordinates up to summon for sudden meeting at mid-night and in some companies, it was really normal that the number of days that workers can go home was only 2 days which was weekend and holiday.
The reason why people in this period could work without complaint is because high reward that appropriates to their qualitative and quantitative labors and people believed in themselves like “I am the person who influences and supports Japanese high economic growth.” Toyota, Honda, Nissan that are representative of Japanese companies were supported by those people.
On the other hand, how about “Black Companies” ? They only push around workers without giving sufficient rewords and fish newly workers by feeding them sounds-nice-words that gives a premonition of self-growth and helping their careers.
The amount of salary of a company running restaurant chain is 180,000 per month and actually this salary contains various types of social insurances, which means the amount of take-home salary is only 140,000 yen.
140,000 yen is as much as the amount of money you can get from livelihood protection from the government, what is more,
if you receive livelihood protection, all the social insurances you need to pay is exempted. This company’s income level is not really different from the income of people supported by the government.
7, Not paying overtime
Black Companies try not to pay overtime this way and that by means of evasion of labor agreements.
There are many cases that a company appeals strongly its morality externally that “we don’t accept overtime work and encourage workers to leave the office on time” on public.
Viewed from the opposite side, a company indicates indirectly not finishing work on time is a personal problem of productivity and it has nothing to do with company’s labor management.
A company doesn’t care if workers don’t leave the office and continue working to finish tasks by their own judgement. But a company will mention it announces official notice already that no overtime is allowed so no matter how impossible to finish your task, working hours except for regular working hours is regarded as private time.
Paying overtime means a company accepts long hour working condition and encourages workers to work over time and it threatens to be indicated that it’s against Labor Standards Act by the government.
8, Strange employment contract
On legal employment contract, you can normally charge overtime payment to the company if your working hours exceed 8 hours a day. Black companies resist persistently against paying overtime compensation in the following way.
You are a manager so we can’t take care of your overtime payment
In common sense, no overtime payment is normally made to a managing post as it were true. I often hear that a person who assume a managing position of a company is not paid overtime.
It is indeed that Japanese Labor Standards Law says a person in a position of manager or supervisor is not obliged to receive augmented wage that guarantees overtime.
So a company appoints a employee to a manager or supervisor to change its contract to managing post in order to avoid paying overtime.
For example, a boss says to a new employee who only do miscellaneous duties that “organizing this section’s papers is your business so I decide to leave this task entirely to you. You are the person in charge of this business from today.” And he/ she can appoint new employee to a manager of the organizing papers section
However, “managing post” defined in each companies does not always correspond to the definition of “manager and supervisor” written on Labor Standards Law.
In this way, if a worker is in a position of “nominal manager” appointed due to company’s circumstances, even if a person is formally a manager, he/she has the right to receive overtime payment.
The problem of “nominal manager” is a controversial issue to problematize a company’s thoughts of trying to reduce personnel costs by installing an employee to a nominal managing post.
Winning promotion is pretty delightful for a concerned person and he/she must get motivated. However, the most important thing is that you always need to chill out yourself and make sure the balance between the amount of tasks, responsibility, your position and your salary.
Normally a person who joins and influences managing decision of a company and has authority of decision making on personnel management is thought to be the one who takes part in important duties that is needed to engage in the business beyond the current framework of labors regulation.
But administrative ruling and judicial precedent judges the relevance limitedly after interpreting a supervisor or a manager on Labor Standards Act is an employee placed in integral position as executives because if it is allowed that a company can appoint a manager unlimitedly at its own discretion, not only nominal managers are flooded around in a company, but also people who can’t receive overtime due to the position although the content of operation that they are concerned is not really different from employee’s level will increase.
I will introduce some of criteria to judge weather a “manager” indicated by a company is the one defined in Labor Standards Act or not.
- You are in the position of heading one section of a company
- You are accepted to concern managing a company
- You can control the amount of tasks and working hours at your own discretion
- You are given good treatment of salary.
Your overtime payment is included in your regular salary.
In Japan, there is a system that a company pays fixed overtime in advance not to calculate actual amount of overtime payment , which is called “de facto working hours system.”
A company supposes a certain amount of overtime and mentions the amount of salary which is aggregate sum of fixed supposition overtime payment and regular salary on a contract in advance.
Lately, so many companies use this system for wrong purpose one after another like a company not paying additional overtime even though workers work clearly longer than the amount of time regulated in this system.
There are some of conditions to satisfy that fixed overtime payment system is accepted by the government and company needs to satisfies the following conditions.
- Supposition overtime payment and overtime working hours need to be indicated
- Supposition overtime payment and overtime working hours need to be clearly written on a contract and pay-slip. For example, only the information “monthly salary 300,000 yen (contains fixed overtime payment)” is unclear about how much payment of overtime is occupied in total salary. So salary information need to reflect both overtime payment and its actual overtime. For example, monthly salary 300,000 yen (contains 50,000 overtime payment to 45 hours)
- Obligation to notice workers
- A company needs to notice workers payroll processing is calculated by fixed supposition overtime payment and regular salary. This should be noticed not only orally but also with a document like work rules.
- The maximum of fixed overtime working hours
- The maximum fixed supposition working hours is not regulated legally. Therefore, it is no problem of how many hours a company can set for fixed overtime if fixed overtime payment exceeds minimum wage.
- If the supposition overtime working hours is longer than actual overtime working hours
- In case your overtime working hours are less than supposition overtime working hours, a company needs to pay entire fixed overtime to workers. It is illegal for a company to reduce fixed payment because of worker’s less overtime working hours than regulated supposition overtime working hours.
- If the actual overtime working hours is longer than the supposition overtime working hours
- In case your actual overtime working hours go over supposition overtime working hours, a company needs to pay additional overtime compensation except for the fixed overtime payment. Paying fixed overtime doesn’t mean a company can make employees work as long as it can with its fixed salary. Of course, a company is obliged to make compensation for the excess of supposition overtime working hours.
You need to work for 10 hours a day
A company that takes advantage of “modified working hour system” proposes the above condition. “Modified working hour system” is the one that manipulates the balance between working hour and salary flexibly in consideration of company’s fluctuate profits depending on the season.
This is a system that allows a company not to pay overtime within a certain period that a company yields little profit.
Simply modified working hour is calculated on not daily basis but monthly or annual basis. Whether working hour goes over legal working hour or not is judged by weather total monthly or annual working hour within a certain period is more or less than legal working hour.
Usually, legal working hour per day is 8 hours and per week is 40 hours. If total working hour goes over these legal working hour, overtime needs to be paid.
But in case of modified working hour system, working hour can be set freely within a month not to exceed monthly legal working hour which is 177 hours.
Viewed from the opposite, within a month, there is a day you may have to work for more than 10 hours or you may be able to finish working for less than 8 hours.
Of course, if total working hour goes over 177 hours, overtime payment needs to be compensated by a company.
However, there so many “Black Companies” rampant that set daily working hour to more than 10 hours (legally 8 hours) by quoting modified working hour systems to assert the legitimacy their basic daily working hour to applicants.
And they intend not to pay overtime if working hour goes over 177 (legal monthly working hour). They pretend to ignore actual overtime circumstances until indicated by the authority.
If indicated, those company try to escape by laying responsibility for workers to say that “workers offer us to work longer than 177 hours and help us by using their private time.”
9, Moving quickly in and out
People working in “Black environment” leave sooner or later. And of course, a company easily abandons workers whom it evaluates useless. The percentage of resignation is pretty high and the ratio of people moving in and out of a company is also pretty high.
Moreover, most of workers quit by going missing all of a sudden without a call or quarreling aggressively with a boss. A boss demonizes quit people and seals inconvenient facts not to examine why they quit a company.
10, Employed easily
If people quit a company, it suffers from a shortage of manpower. In such a background, there are a few people quitting job in a proper way after taking over their tasks appropriately to a successor so that a company needs people immediately.
A company doesn’t mostly raise the bar by adding conditions like academy background, job history to hire new people. It has no room to sift applicants by filters of academic background and job history. Only the criterion for employment is if applicants bear the harsh working environment or not.
This is the reason why a company want to use frequently phrases like “passion”, “motivation”, “growth” on its motto.
If you enter a company with that kind of reason, you are in a vicious circle that you can’t get out of because you already declare that you can do in that environment on contract.
It is pretty important to have emotions like “motivation” , “passion” and “growth” when you work.
However, it puts the cart before the horse if you are forced to work in harsh working environment due to being brainwashed by phrases like “motivation”, “passion”, “growth” that a company conveniently takes advantage of in order to make you a slave.
How to pierce if a company you apply for is “Black Company”
Those who are looking for job in Japan may want to avoid applying for “Black Company” anyhow. However, from employees viewpoint, work style in start-ups can become partially “Black Company” that provides terribly harsh working environment to workers. But the clear difference between “Black Company” and “White Company” is whether being compelled to obey or being motivated to show initiative even if the company is a start-up that drives you into long-hour working battle field.
So depending on the person, the definition of “Black Company” becomes really different but the crucial point you need to see is that a company is going to buy new disposable slaves or a company is going to join hands together with new partners.
Using abstract expressions to job names
“Black Company” that can’t make profit without forcing burden on workers has no attractive points to work there so abstract expression is favorably used as slogan for the company in order to lure people into employment like
- homely atmosphere
- challenging job
- being energetic and lively
In addition, “Black Company” uses ambiguous expression which is hard to imagine the contents of the job at first sight in many cases.
For example, type of job “consultancy“ which is really popular among young job hunters is actually walk-in sales that you find clients and introduce them services from door to door and type of job “call center operator” is actually sales call job with tremendous amount of quota to conclude contracts.
At any rate, you have to be care about the company that uses unclear abstract expressions that you can hardly imagine what type of industry this company belongs to and what type of job you are assigned at first sight.
Salary
“Black Company” tends to hide inconvenient information about salary because it doesn’t want to pay salary to workers as much as possible. However, there are almost few cases that the basic salary is less than that written on employment contract or unpaid for a couple of months. The problem is whether overtime payment is guaranteed.
If there is something you find it strange on the employment contract, you need to ask persistently until you can understand perfectly. Especially, an expression “overtime payment is partially guaranteed” almost indicates “fixed overtime payment”
Working hours
Forcing long hour hard working is the most significant feature of “Black Company”. They try to hide the fact that it forces workers to work for a long hour without appropriate guarantees. It pretends to be a superior company ostensibly on recruitment advertisement. So you can’t count on catch phrases for anything on a ads.
How you feel when visiting the office
Fixed regular working hour showed on Black Company’s recruitment ads can be referred to only a few days a year you can be allowed to finish your task within this regular working hour or be referred to the one of another section in a company.
To protect yourself from being caught in this recruitment trap, going to the office and seeing the situation inside is a certain way to make sure whether a company you try to apply for is “Black Company” or not.
Especially, if you can find a lot of garbages and private properties around worker’s desk, it is a proof that overtime hard work style is normalized in this office because of not going home frequently.
It is no good to judge people by appearances but this is one of the choices to judge if a company protect labor rights legally by how people work as a means of getting accurate information emerging out of worker’s every day situation.
For example,
- workers’ looks are so gloomy and they seem to be as dizzy as exhausted,
- their wearing suits are worn out
- the office is filled with wired excitement which is closed to brainwashing
If you feel something wired instinctively at the moment you enter in the office, I think the probability that the company you visit is “Black Company” is pretty high.