The ruling parties are making final arrangements for a bill to reform Japan’s pension system.

Concerns have risen that moves for expanding enrollment of part-time workers in the Employees’ Pension Insurance system have slowed.

And on a separate front, the bill is expected to include a measure to effectively compensate wage losses of part-time workers to discourage them from adjusting their working hours to stay below a certain income threshold.

Such a measure, which would give similar workers preferential treatment at the cost of premiums paid by others, appears undeniably unfair as it stands.

For company employees and civil servants to qualify as a “Category 2” enrollee of workplace-based social insurance systems, or the Employees’ Pension Insurance and Employees’ Health Insurance programs, they must meet a number of requirements concerning their weekly work hours, wage levels and the number of workers on their employer’s payroll.

Measures have been taken gradually to relax those requirements to expand coverage of the social insurance systems and increase enrollment.

Late last year, the pension committee of the welfare ministry’s Social Security Council proposed abolishing the wage threshold, currently set at 88,000 yen ($590) a month, or the equivalent of 1.06 million yen a year. It also recommended getting rid of the threshold concerning the number of workers, which basically says more than 50 should be on the payroll.

The committee has been discussing the coming round of pension system reforms, which are undertaken every five years.

During their discussions, committee officials have made arrangements to scrap the wage level requirements within three years.

But they are set to decide to only gradually abolish the requirement concerning payroll numbers over a period of 10 years.

Employers must pay part of the social insurance premiums for their employees. The committee officials likely decided that small businesses would find it difficult to cope with that new obligation very soon.

Still, the time frame of 10 years is too long.

Unmarried workers who don’t qualify for the employees’ social insurance systems and have, therefore, been paying premiums on their own for the National Pension and National Health Insurance programs would have to pay less in premiums and be entitled to more benefits if they were enrolled in Category 2.

That advantage on the side of the workers should be taken more seriously.

A bigger problem is that the bill appears likely to include an institutional arrangement under the designation of a stopgap measure to make up for part of workers’ premium payments. It is intended to discourage people from adjusting their working hours to stay below the 1.06-million-yen annual income “wall” because they don’t want to have to pay social insurance premiums.

The prospective beneficiaries of the arrangement are “Category 3” enrollees, or dependent spouses of Category 2 insured persons.

Some of those people would likely adjust their working hours to remain Category 3 enrollees, who are entitled to receive benefits without having to pay premiums themselves.

The draft bill currently discussed within the ruling coalition would allow businesses to cover an additional part of the social insurance premiums for those who work beyond the income “wall.”

That part would be up to half of their net income losses. And the Japan Pension Service would refund 80 percent of the additional coverage to those businesses.

This would amount to padding the wages of corresponding part-time workers at the cost of premiums paid by other businesses and their employees.

Moreover, the beneficiaries of the wage loss compensation measure would see their future pension payouts increase in the same manner as if they were to regularly pay their premiums.

We wonder how the officials would defend such a setup if it were criticized as being unfair.

Measures for leveling the “wall” are themselves acceptable, but they should be centered on self-help efforts of businesses that wish to acquire workers amid labor shortages.

The officials should reflect on the wisdom of the draft reform bill before they approve it.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 23