When people think about social insurance (shakai hoken, or 社会保険), they usually think about health insurance or the deductions from their monthly paycheck. But one of the most valuable parts of the system is often overlooked: your future pension.

If your employer does not enroll you in Employees’ Pension Insurance when they are required to do so, you aren’t just losing benefits today—you may be losing retirement income for the rest of your life. 

Employees’ Pension Insurance is designed to build your retirement income throughout your working life. Every month that you are properly enrolled contributes to your future pension. When an employer illegally keeps an eligible employee out of the system, gaps are created in that record. Those missing months can mean a lower pension after retirement.

Unlike unpaid wages, pension losses often go unnoticed for years. Many workers only discover the problem when they check their pension record or begin preparing for retirement. By then, the financial consequences may last a lifetime.

Why Does This Happen?

Japanese law requires employers to enroll eligible employees in social insurance. Yet some businesses still avoid their legal obligations by:

• Keeping employees just below enrolment thresholds.
• Misclassifying workers as independent contractors.
• Manipulating working arrangements to avoid enrolment requirements.
• Simply failing to enroll eligible employees.

These practices can save employers hundreds of thousands of yen per worker each year by avoiding their share of health insurance and pension contributions, while leaving workers to bear the long-term cost through reduced retirement security. 

One of the most frustrating aspects of illegal non-enrolment is that the true financial impact often isn’t known until retirement. A worker may know they were denied social insurance years earlier, but the full effect on their pension may not become clear until they begin receiving pension payments. By then, the employer has already benefited from years of unpaid contributions, while the worker faces a reduced pension for the rest of their retirement.

This is what makes these cases so serious. The damage isn’t limited to the years you were employed – it can continue for decades after you stop working.

General Union Is Fighting Back

For more than twenty years, General Union has helped workers obtain the social insurance coverage they were legally entitled to receive. We negotiate with employers, assist members in filing complaints, and work to ensure that workers are properly enrolled before years of pension contributions are lost.

But when employers refuse to take responsibility, the union is prepared to go further. We are currently pursuing legal action against employers that illegally failed to enroll eligible workers in social insurance. These cases seek not only to hold employers accountable for breaking the law, but also to establish that workers should not bear the lifelong financial consequences of an employer’s illegal actions. We expect these cases to have important implications for workers across Japan.

Don’t Wait Until Retirement!

Many workers assume they have been correctly enrolled in Employees’ Pension Insurance simply because they have been working for years.  Don’t assume – check!

Review your pension record and make sure your enrolment history is complete. If you believe you should be enrolled in social insurance but are not, seek advice as soon as possible. The earlier a problem is identified, the greater the opportunity to protect your future retirement.

An employer who illegally fails to enroll an eligible worker isn’t simply breaking an administrative rule. They may be reducing that worker’s retirement income for years—or even decades—to come. General Union believes every worker deserves the pension they have earned.

Your pension is built one month at a time. If those months are stolen, your retirement security can be stolen with them.