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Government to encourage workers to take more paid leave?

April 21, 2009
By Ken Worsley


Over 50% of paid vacation allocated to Japanese workers goes unused each year, and the government is currently looking at way to encourage more workers to take paid leave as part of an effort to increase domestic travel and tourism. According to today’s Nikkei, the government is examining a host of measures that could reduce overcrowding at peak travel times and create new three day weekends.

Fixing holidays so that workers have more three day weekends makes good sense, and could certainly make it easier - though not necessarily more affordable - for workers to travel domestically. The government is also considering staggering summer breaks at schools in order to reduce overcrowding.

However, the campaign to encourage workers to take more paid leave is the most interesting. Apparently, the government has discussed changing accounting regulations to require firms to book reserve provisions for unused holidays as debt.

Would this work? The government estimates that if workers took their full allotment of paid days off that about 1.5 million jobs would be created and about 12 trillion yen in revenue could be generated. Of course, these figures assume that workers will actually travel - and not to Korea - on their extra paid days off and newly found three day weekends. The Nikkei article gives no detail behind the numbers, but they would be good to see.

Filed Under Business, Labor and Wages, Politics, Tourism 

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Comments

4 Responses to “Government to encourage workers to take more paid leave?”

  1. Matt on April 23rd, 2009 11:24 am

    Who the hell doesn’t use their paid vacation? I get 4 weeks and it doesn’t feel like enough.

  2. david on April 27th, 2009 12:45 am

    You don’t use your paid time off when your culture dictates that it shows less-than-optimal loyalty to the company. You get promoted in Japan by showing up early, staying late, and not taking your full vacation.

  3. Yasir on April 30th, 2009 8:22 am

    Either they should change it mandatory to take at least specific percentage of paid leave or they should amend in a way that unused leaves can be changed for money. Sometimes I really feel for my Japanese colleagues who almost throw away 20days per year.

  4. Kenneth Reyes-Lao on May 21st, 2009 6:09 pm

    It worked in the Philippines. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has implemented and signed into law the “Holiday Economics” or the shifting of holiday observances.
    The law mandates that most holidays, except for those with religious significance, be moved to the nearest Monday. This gives the people a three day sometimes four-day weekends which they can use to travel.

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