Photo/Illutration A sign of a Marugame Udon shop (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

An administrative appeal board sided with a former Marugame Udon Inc. shop manager who claimed to have worked long overtime hours during supposed “breaks,” and falsified work-hour records.

The Labor Insurance Appeal Committee’s decision in April overturned a previous decision by a labor standards inspection office, which had rejected the employee’s claims that he was working during times listed as breaks.

The ruling came after the employee and his father repeatedly filed complaints and applied for a review with the labor ministry’s Tokyo Labor Bureau, which supervises labor standards inspection offices, and the appeal committee.

The ruling may serve as a warning to employers against the exploitative practice of disguising unpaid overtime as breaks, which has been an increasing issue in the understaffed restaurant industry, but can be difficult to prove.

The employee, who is in his 20s and still on medical leave from his job, developed depression in June 2019 while working at a Marugame Udon noodle shop in Tokyo.

The Mukojima Labor Standards Inspection Office in the capital’s Sumida Ward recognized his symptoms as a work-related illness caused by an excessive workload in September 2020.

However, the office rejected the employee’s claims that he was actually working during breaks and calculated compensation largely based on the company’s own work-hour records.

When the Labor Insurance Appeal Committee re-examined the case, it found the company records suspicious and generally matched the employee’s claims that he had falsified them.

According to the committee’s ruling, the employee’s breaks sharply increased after he became a shop manager in February 2019, while his overtime hours only increased a little.

In June 2019, his breaks totaled 68 hours, up from about 20 hours a month before he became a manager.

The employee’s father said he was unable to believe the unusually long breaks. 

According to the work log for June 4 that year, the employee spent 15 hours at his workplace from 6:54 a.m. to 9:54 p.m., but took two breaks totaling six hours and 45 minutes.

That means he worked only eight hours and 15 minutes, including 15 minutes of overtime.

The committee rejected the break records prepared by the company, partly based on a colleague’s testimony that the employee was working while keeping the “rest button” on.

The company had also acknowledged that the employee’s supervisors “communicated” to him that overtime could not be recorded beyond 45 hours a month.

The committee said the employee’s actual break time must be calculated in accordance with the company’s employee work rules.

His actual overtime during the three months before he developed depression had been approximately 80 to 100 hours per month, the level considered to be the threshold for determining “karoshi,” or death from overwork.

Toridoll Holdings Corp., the parent of Marugame Udon, declined to comment, saying it was not aware of the committee’s ruling.

The company has been negotiating a settlement, including pain and suffering damages, with the employee.

“In restaurants and other industries, cases of inserting (fake) break times into the records to make working hours appear shorter have been increasing,” said Kazunari Tamaki, a lawyer who specializes in workers’ compensation issues.

However, Tamaki said the committee’s ruling is a significant warning to such employers.

The Labor Insurance Appeal Committee, which is established under the labor minister, reviews decisions by labor standards inspection offices and prefectural labor bureaus.

In fiscal 2023, the committee ruled on 560 cases related to workers’ compensation and overturned earlier decisions in 15 cases.

(This article was written by Ryo Shimura and Takehiko Sawaji, a senior staff writer.)

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