In modern society, overtime and inner scrolls have long been famous, but have you ever heard of the monks in the temple, "overwork work"?
Higashi Honganji Temple in Kyoto, Japan, because of the long-term failure to pay the overtime pay of two monks' irregular employees, was on the hot search in Japan in 2017, and Higashi Honganji Actually owed 6.6 million yen in overtime wages in 4 years, and what surprised the outside world was that the two monks who were owed wages worked in the temple for up to 17 hours a day, and the temple that yearned for the Pure Land of Bliss in the West turned into an endless hell of monks' labor, which caused a public uproar for a while.
Japanese monks are not the same as our Chinese monks, they can grow their hair, get married, eat meat, is a fairly free profession, but also many women want to marry. This has to start from the Nara and Heian periods in Japan, when Japanese monks also had a similar "monk and nun order" in China, and becoming a monk not only required state approval but also stipulated that they could not preach to the people. However, by the middle of the tenth century, due to the gradual weakening of the household registration system, the monks and nuns ordered the system to collapse, making Japanese monasteries secular.
According to Japan's Sankei Shimbun, the two male monks of the monastery asked the union for help to ask for wages, and higashi Honganji Temple, from November 2013 to March 2017, owed the two of them about 6.6 million yen (about 320,000 yuan) in overtime wages, which attracted social attention, and although Higashi Honganji Temple had paid this huge overtime pay, the two monks also said that in addition to them, many monks suffered the same treatment, vaguely revealing that the Japanese temple was a black-hearted enterprise." Terrible hell".
The two higashi Hongan-ji monks, 34 and 38, work as "supplementary guides" for the care of believers at the "Tongpeng Kaikan", a training facility at Higashi Hongan-ji Temple in Kyoto, including service, sweeping, receiving groups of believers, and sometimes holding lectures or symposia at night. The followers of Higashi Honganji Temple come from all over Japan, so the business is very busy, and the service hours are in principle from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., but the actual working hours of these two monks are from 6:45 a.m. to 11 p.m., and the high working hours a day are nearly 17 hours a day, far exceeding the 8-hour limit stipulated in the Japanese Labor Standard Law. In busy months, they may even work up to 130 hours of overtime throughout the month, and 80 hours of overtime in January, which crosses the Japanese overwork death line.
Higashi Hongan-ji Temple belongs to the Shinmune Otani sect of the Pure Land Sect of Japan, with about 8,800 temples and 7.92 million followers in Japan and abroad, and Higashi Hongan-ji Temple in Kyoto's Shimogyo Ward is its main mountain. In the face of this kind of ultra-high working hours of blood and sweat, the monastery side believes that this is not necessarily the so-called "work" of the world, but emphasizes that it is the natural responsibility of faith and practice. The monk, who turned to the trade union group for help, said:
It is not surprising that people die in the workplace one day, but monasteries always use faith as a shield.
However, such monastic "supplementary" work was not recognized in the past as requiring overtime pay or allowances outside working hours. According to the Sankei Shimbun, in 1973, the Shinmune Otani faction signed an agreement with the "Shinjong Otani Staff Group" of the labor regiment stating that overtime payments for additional work would not be paid, but this was illegal. The staff of Higashi Hongan-ji Temple were strongly dissatisfied with the phenomenon that they were paid for their usual monastic work, but could not work overtime for supplementary tutoring, and negotiated with the monastery side through the trade union. Makoto Shimono, head of the temple's headquarters, said:
Monastic work is self-practice by monks, and it is customary not to pay overtime for supplementary work.
Shimono also said that the self-motivation of these monks had deteriorated and been spoiled. However, the monastery also promised that perhaps a punch card system could be introduced to improve the working environment. At the same time that the two sides agreed to repay the payment, Higashi Hongan-ji Temple dismissed two monks at the end of March on the grounds of "business reduction". The monastery side actually stressed that whether the monks' service is "dedicated service" or "work labor", the line between the two is ambiguous, and it is not enough to just abide by the law, and it is necessary to review the methods and salary payment system of the monks' supplementary work as soon as possible.
I can only say that the monastery side is really willful! Actually saying that compulsory overtime is so grandiose, the black-hearted bosses on the mainland may not be able to say such a thing.
Whether the monks are "dedicated" or "laborers", and whether they are legally recognized laborers, the case of Higashi Hongan-ji Temple is not the first time that public opinion has been reflected. In 2016, such an incident also happened in Japan, a monk in Fukui Prefecture accidentally fell down a stone ladder and was injured while attending a banquet to receive believers, and then filed a work injury lawsuit, but in this case, the monastery side was also so tough, believing that the monk was a fengxian, not a labor, and since it was not a labor, it was not a work injury... Is a monk's injury a "professional injury"? Is socializing with the faithful the "labor" of the monks? Many questions have aroused heated discussion in Japanese society.
In fact, in Japan, there are still monks employed in the same monasteries as ordinary companies, and many relevant monk job descriptions can be found on job search websites. Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare pointed out that the labor standards for judging monks should consider whether monasteries work according to the employment contract relationship like private enterprises, and there are many cases that need to be judged...
How to see that the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is playing tai chi, it is impossible to think of pulling something out, and finally Xiao Yan thought of a question: If in China, a monk is injured while receiving believers, can it be regarded as a work injury? Is socializing with the faithful the "labor" of the monks?
Welcome to comment!
(End)