paid holidays/personal days

does anyone know about labour laws for paid holidays?:

i work for a very small language school. actually i am the only full time teacher.

i get 2 weeks at christmas and 2 weeks at obon as well as national holidays but i don't get any paid sick leave.

my question is: am i entitled to 5 or 10 days that i can at my discretion on the basis that the other holidays are fixed or that i can use when i am sick?

in past jobs i think i received this.

does the fact that the school is so small change the rules?

thanks

helen

Labor laws dictate that the maximum regular working hours per week is 40 hours and that you must be given at least 10 days paid holidays per year (minimum increases if you work for multiple years in the same company).

There are no laws about sick leave. It is up to the company to pay or not pay sick leave.

Paid holidays/vacation days - yes, you should get at least 10 paid days per year.

There is no exact equivalent to "personal days" in Japan. You call in sick one day, then later you might have to allocate a day from your paid holidays so that your salary will not be reduced, or you just accept the day's pay to be subtracted from your salary; or your company *might* decide to pay you for that.

The company might think two weeks at Christmas and two weeks at obon are plenty for you; if you want to take other days off, you might just have to see if you can negotiate something with them.

Most company employees in Japan have the right to use about a maximum of 40 days of paid holidays per year and end up using about 7 to 14 days worth as they are too busy. The number of holidays are written on their contract or rule book.

Usually, an employee would pick a few days from their paid holidays and arrange dates so that it can be used during obon and New Years. Then they would use the rest to pay for sudden illness or accidents. And then, for the rest of the paid holidays they couldn't use, they would use it upon leaving the company for good.

If your Christmas/obon holidays are paid, then that makes sense. As suggested, ask for written material that shows how many paid holidays you have in total. Then if you have none for sudden illness, ask if you can sort a few days out from your Christmas vacation.

by law you are entitled to 10 days in addition to any fixed vacations - that is where everyone in the company has a holiday.

you are not entittled to additional sick days.

it is possible that the company has negotiated with your union or representative to reduce you leave to 5 days. why the government allows this, and why the unions accept this is beyond me.

at any rate you have 5 days which you can use when you like (although if the timing doesn't suit your company they can make you take the time off at a different time) or when you are sick