The government has decided on a draft outline of new guidelines to prevent workplace bullying known as “power harassment,” or “pawa hara,” in Japan.

The guidelines spell out the measures employers are required to take to prevent employees from bullying subordinates or colleagues and describe specific examples of verbal and physical conduct that constitutes power harassment.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare plans to determine official anti-power harassment guidelines based on the draft by year-end after a public comment period.

Some experts are concerned about the effectiveness of the guidelines, which they warn may adopt a narrow definition of power harassment. The ministry needs to address such concerns.

Companies have been urged to make voluntary efforts to deal with the endemic problem. But a new law has been enacted to mandate companies to take measures to prevent harassment at their workplaces. The new legal requirements will take effect in June for large companies and in April 2022 for small and midsize firms.

The measures businesses are required to take include creating a counseling unit and developing in-house rules.

The health ministry will have the power to urge companies failing to comply with the law to mend their ways through so-called “gyosei shido” (administrative guidance), or suggestions and “unwritten orders” given by bureaucrats. The ministry will also be authorized to publish the names of the companies in egregious cases of violations.

In response to concerns among companies about the difficulty of drawing a line between instruction needed for business operations and abusive behavior, the ministry describes typical cases of power harassment in the guidelines.

The rough draft of the guidelines published by the ministry last month referred to six main categories of power harassment, including “physical attacks” and “excessive demands.” More detailed and specific descriptions in the draft included “delivering a severe and unnecessarily long reprimand” and “removing an employee from a position and isolating him or her in a separate room for a long period of time.”

The draft guidelines also cited some examples that should not be treated as power harassment. They included “mistakenly hitting a person with something and causing an injury,” and “assigning temporarily an employee to an easy task that is not commensurate to his or her skills and abilities for management reasons.”

Because of these examples of non-cases of harassment, the rough draft of the guidelines was criticized as “something of a catalog of excuses for employers.”

The new draft does not include these examples. As part of the criteria for determining whether certain acts qualify as power harassment, the new draft stipulates that attention should also be paid to the potential victims’ mental and physical conditions and perceptions of the treatment they have received.

The draft guidelines are far from flawless, however. They say, for example, it does not constitute power harassment to “give a warning with a certain degree of strength to an employee who has behaved in a manner that violates the social norms and has not improved his or her behavior despite repeated admonitions.”

But it is unclear what “a certain degree of strength” means.

There are concerns that this provision could be interpreted to mean that abusive actions against workers do not qualify as power harassment if the workers have exhibited problematic behavior.

As for measures to protect people not on the company’s payrolls from power harassment, such as job-seeking students and freelance self-employed workers, the draft guidelines only say, “it is desirable for companies to try to make appropriate responses as the necessity arises.”

How many companies would take really effective measures to deal with the issue in response to such a lukewarm call for action?

The labor ministry says it will issue notices to deal with details and specifics that are not fully covered by the guidelines so that the new rules will be really effective.

The guidelines should not work to narrow the definition of power harassment or be used by employers to escape their responsibility.

It should not be forgotten that the effort is aimed at protecting workers.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 22