MonkeyBoy のメッセージ:

> I was working for a small software engineering company (A Japanese
> company of about 12 people) since June.  The owner ("CEO" as he likes
> to be called) was always late paying employees' salaries.  As of
> September he stopped paying salary altogether and doesn't even show up
> at the office.
>
> Anyway, after two weeks, not receiving my salary for September I quit
> and went to the labor bureau and they had me write an official letter
> and sent it by registered mail.  Essentially it gave him one week to
> pay up - that means until tomorrow, Oct 31st.  If he doesn't (which I
> do not think he will) I'm supposed to go back and they will try to
> contact him and find out what the story is.
>
> My next course of action, I was told, would be to bring him to small
> claims court.  So, I'd like to know if anyone here has actually been
> through this process before and if there is any advice which you might
> have.

I have had a similar experience, and I sincerely hope you fare better
in the end than I did. I hope you speak and understand Japanese well;
you're not going to get any handicap standing in a Japanese court (that
I know of) and you will be expected to hire your own lawyer to help you
through the process. There are a few lawyers that will work for free
(and take an unfair percentage of your settlement), though most
depending on how much money you'll be looking for, and how verifiable
your case is, you may find it difficult to find one that's willing to
take you on for small claims.

I'm sure it's the same anywhere else in the world, but they'll also
make you run around the city like a fool collecting paperwork to
present to the court, and here's where you might find yourself in a
little trouble. You first have to verify that the company exists in
paper, through what government office I can't remember at the moment. A
small, shady company like the one you describe is likely to have made
some "accidental" mistakes when registering, and it may be impossible
to find the company in the registered network. If you can't verify the
company's existence (apparently a picture of the front door isn't good
enough?), then I'm not sure if the court will look at your case at all:
I was rejected.

A good lawyer will probably open a lot of back doors for you, but I'll
assume you're dealing with money in the range of about ￥100k - 500k,
and you might not be able to get a good lawyer willing to work with
such small prospects. Less than that and you've got no chance at all,
really.

The labour bureau isn't much help either; the English service has
extremely limited hours, and all of the "English speakers" I talked to
had the vocabulary of a Japanese high school student, plus a few extra
words like "contract" and "interest". Not exactly the level required to
properly communicate your feelings about a hot-headed shacho. They will
show great pleasure if you allow them to speak to you in Japanese
instead. Then there's the fact that they hold no power greater than to
send a messenger to your workplace to remind your former boss that
legally he's intended to pay.

I hope you have a copy of your work contract, your boss may deny that
you ever worked, or lie saying that you only worked for a short period
of time.

I hope you kept a record of the hours you worked, though it's easy for
your boss to lie about this, too.

I also hope you live in Tokyo, because I can only imagine how
troublesome this would be living outside of Kanto or Kansai. There's
also the fact that you can't do anything unless you have no other
obligations on regular weekdays between the hours of 10am and 3pm
(depending on the institution). New Year's is also coming up soon: All
government offices will be closed for at least a week into January.

Other than that I can only wish you luck. I hope you meet some nice
people, and by that I mean people who understand the faults of the
"system" in Japan and will do all they can to try to maneuver you
around it, not the kind of people who will say things like, "Aw, that's
so bad. What a horrible shacho. I wish I could do more."

I never got my ￥80k back.