The Relationship between Labour Law and Human Resource Management

Abstract

Labour law and human resources management has interdependent relationship. This mutual relationship shall be analyzed in this paper.

The aim of labour law is to establish fair relationship between labour and management through industrial autonomy, for example collective bargaining. For the purpose labour law has two means. One is to prohibit to conclude labour contract whose contents are less than minimum labour standards provided by labour law, especially the Labour Standards Act and related Acts. Another is to determine working conditions through collective bargaining between management and labour union. For the purpose workers' right shall be guaranteed to organize labour unions. On the other hand, the purpose of human resources management is to manage manpower efficiently to get high productivity in an enterprise. Therefore labour law places emphasis on fairness and human resources management on efficiency.

But the opinions of labour unions and management can be considered to make and amend labour laws at the government committee. And in an enterprise the opinions of labour side can be reflected to decide how to conduct personnel management. Therefore, as a result, efficiency and fairness shall be balanced between both sides.

The person in charge of human resources management shall observe provisions of labour law. Penal punishment shall be imposed to the breach of Labour Standards Act. But the numbers of punishment are so few. Administrative supervision is often available to secure the enforcement of the Act. Soft sanctions are useful in Japan. And to promote employment security various kinds of subsidies are paid under Employment Insurance Act.

Recently deregulation of labour law is asserted in order to secure and promote employment opportunity. And labour market shall be entrusted to market-oriented mechanism. But labour law pursuing fairness is necessary to prevent harmful influences suffered from market-oriented mechanism. Considering the new employment system, we will confirm this resolution.

The first is diversity of workers' consciousness. So it becomes difficult to manage workers collectively. Individualization of human resources management is necessary in stead of collective human resources management. This means that individual labour contract becomes important to determine working conditions. For this purpose, provisions on labour contract are deregulated under the Labour Standards Act. But the degree of deregulation is now low.

The second is the mobilization of labour market. To adopt the trend Employment Security Act and Workers' Dispatching Act is amended to loosen the regulations. But there are some parts to tighten regulations in order to avoid harmful results.

The third is diversity of working style. Flexible working hours system is adopted to correspond to the expansion of service economy and the spread of information technology. The Labour Standards Act adopts four types of flexible working hours, but it regulates the conditions strongly in order to introduce this system. And it also strengthens the upper limit of overtime work hours to reduce annual working hours. It is considered to be important to reduce working hours. Stronger regulation of overtime work is reflective of fairness of labour law.

The fourth is diversity of employment form. All workers do not want to enjoy long-time employment system. A part of them prefer to work as irregular workers because they can freely arrange working hours. So the numbers of irregular workers are increasing, for example part-time workers, casual workers and contract workers and etc. Part-time workers have been deemed to be an auxiliary labour force. But it has become necessary to improve employment management for them. This is understood to keep fairness pursued by labour law.

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