Duty of Care and Foreign Workers | The Risk of "Training They Don't Understand," Lessons from Case Law

TL;DR

• The duty of care (安全配慮義務 / safety duty of care — the company's duty to protect its workers from harm) is grounded in Article 5 of the Labor Contract Act. It applies fully to foreign workers without exception
• In a case where training was conducted using Japanese-only materials for a worker with limited Japanese proficiency, the company was held liable (Osaka District Court, July 31, 2024)
• "Records that the training was conducted" under Article 59 of the Industrial Safety and Health Act (労安法 / Industrial Safety and Health Act — hire-time safety training) are not a defense by themselves. Whether the method was understandable to the worker is also examined
• Compensation can reach tens of millions of yen, and secondary harm — loss of trust, suspension of business relationships — can be just as severe
• Countermeasures are a three-piece set: ① comprehension check in advance, ② native-language materials or "Plain Japanese" + visual materials, ③ retention of comprehension test records

We're hearing this question more and more from legal, general affairs, and executive teams at companies employing foreign workers: "We deliver safety training using Japanese-language materials — what happens if there's an accident?" Frankly, the 2024 ruling has produced a practical answer.

This article organizes — from a legal perspective — what the duty of care is, how far it extends to foreign workers, the case that found a breach, and the measures companies should take. It also draws the line with the training obligation under the Industrial Safety and Health Act (Article 59 = the hire-time safety training obligation).

1. What Is the Duty of Care — Employer Responsibility under Article 5 of the Labor Contract Act

Here we lay out the source of the duty of care and its two-layer structure with the Industrial Safety and Health Act. Let's first dispel the misconception that "complying with the Industrial Safety and Health Act is enough."

The duty of care is the employer's obligation codified in Article 5 of the Labor Contract Act (the law stating that companies must give the consideration necessary to safeguard the lives and bodies of the workers they employ).

An employer shall, in accordance with the labor contract, give the necessary consideration so that the worker can work while ensuring their life, body, and so on are safe.

A short article, but here is the point. Through accumulated case law, "necessary consideration" has been clarified to mean more than just complying with the Industrial Safety and Health Act.

1-1. The Two-Layer Structure: Industrial Safety and Health Act vs Duty of Care

These are frequently confused in practice, so let's start with the distinction.

A quick read of this table

The Industrial Safety and Health Act is "the minimum rules the state imposes on companies (breaches mean administrative sanctions or fines)"; the duty of care is "the additional responsibility based on the company-worker contract (breaches mean the company owes compensation to the individual worker)." For the same accident, think of two entry points.

The Industrial Safety and Health Act draws the line for "at least this much you must do." The duty of care builds on top of that, requiring additional consideration tailored to the individual situation. "If we follow the regulations, we're done" is wrong.

It's a misconception that complying with the Industrial Safety and Health Act fulfills the duty of care

The Industrial Safety and Health Act is just the minimum standard. For example, work where danger is foreseeable but not covered by statute still requires additional training and safety equipment. "We delivered the statutory training" alone is not treated as fulfilling the duty of care — this is now well established.

1-2. The Two-Stage Test: Foreseeability and Duty to Avoid the Result

Case law tests a breach of the duty of care in two stages.

• Foreseeability: Could the employer have foreseen the risk of an accident?
• Duty to avoid the result: Did the employer take measures to avoid the foreseen risk?

For foreign workers, a situation where "we trained a worker with limited Japanese using only Japanese" is easily found to satisfy foreseeability. If the company then failed to provide native-language materials or an interpreter, that becomes a failure of the duty to avoid the result.

2. The Scope of the Duty of Care for Foreign Workers

Here we answer the naive question "can we give less consideration because they're foreign?" The answer is no. Case law actually demands more attentive, individually tailored consideration.

2-1. Consideration Matched to Japanese Proficiency

Workers' Japanese ability varies dramatically. Some are at JLPT N1 with no friction in daily work; others, only a few months in Japan, can barely manage basic greetings. The duty of care framework requires training built around that worker's level of understanding.

Frankly, many companies will quickly say "we provide Vietnamese materials, so we're fine." But it's a minority who actually verify literacy and educational background. "Providing the native-language version" alone is not enough.

2-2. Match Between Residence Status and Work

Technical Intern Training, Specified Skilled Worker, Skill Development Employment (the new system effective April 2027) — each residence status restricts the scope of work the worker can perform. Assigning workers to dangerous work beyond the permitted scope is itself a labor-law violation. It also weighs against you in any duty-of-care assessment.

2-3. What the MHLW Guidelines Call For

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's "Guidelines on Safety and Health Measures for Foreign Workers" (issued 2020) call for the following:

• Conducting safety and health training in the worker's native language
• Using materials that are easy to understand visually (diagrams, photos, video, pictograms)
• Supporting acquisition of the Japanese vocabulary and basic signals needed to understand safety instructions and warnings
• Establishing a consultation desk available in the native language

The guidelines themselves have no legal force. But they function as the reference standard for "what should have been done" in any duty-of-care assessment.

Guidelines are not law. But the fact that "it was written in the guidelines and we didn't do it" will reliably work against the company in court.

3. The Most Important Recent Ruling — Osaka District Court, July 31, 2024

Here we read the ruling that squarely found a "training the worker couldn't understand" to be a breach. We organize the facts and reasoning, then extract the lessons.

A recent ruling found a breach of the duty of care toward a foreign worker head-on: the Osaka District Court ruling of July 31, 2024. In one line: "a case finding the company liable when it conducted safety training only in Japanese for a Vietnamese worker who could not read Japanese, without preparing Vietnamese materials." The key points of the ruling are below.

3-1. The Facts

• A Vietnamese worker who could barely read, write, or speak Japanese suffered a finger injury while operating a press machine in a manufacturing site
• The company's safety training was conducted only with Japanese materials, and no Vietnamese materials were prepared
• Key management for the press machine's safety device was also inadequate

3-2. The Court's Ruling

The court ruled as follows (summary):

• The man could not read Japanese and could hardly speak it, yet the safety training materials were Japanese-only
• Not preparing Vietnamese materials is treated as a failure to conduct training in a form the worker could understand
• Key management of the press machine's safety device was also inadequate
• Holding that the accident could have been prevented if the man had been trained on safe operating procedures, the court found the company in breach of its duty of care

In other words: although "training records" existed, the court refused to treat the training as having been conducted, given that the worker could not understand it.

Why records alone are not a defense

Courts weigh "whether the worker substantively understood" more heavily than "the formality that training was conducted." A formal argument that "we handed over Japanese materials and got a signature" is not treated as fulfilling the duty of care.

3-3. Lessons to Draw from This Ruling

This ruling clarified the line of company responsibility for foreign-worker safety training. Three lessons:

1. Japanese-only materials are themselves a risk: The moment you have a worker with low Japanese proficiency, native-language materials or equivalent understandable materials are required
2. Comprehension verification is now mandatory: Just handing over materials isn't enough. The duty extends to confirming the worker actually understood
3. Equipment management and training are evaluated together: As the key-management failure was raised in the same finding, training failures and equipment-management failures are evaluated together

4. Corporate Risks When a Breach Is Found

Here we organize the cost of a breach finding in three layers — monetary, administrative, and business continuity. In practice, the secondary harm is often more severe than the compensation itself.

4-1. Direct Monetary Risk

• Compensation: Treatment costs, lost wages, pain and suffering, lost future earnings. Tens of millions of yen in severe cases
• Survivor compensation: In fatality cases, examples exceed 100 million yen
• Relationship with workers' compensation insurance: Civil damages apply to amounts exceeding what workers' compensation insurance covers

4-2. Administrative and Criminal Risk

• Corrective recommendations and guidance from the labor inspector
• For serious cases, referral to prosecution (the case file sent to the public prosecutor as a criminal matter) under the Industrial Safety and Health Act
• Becoming a target for special inspector oversight, with comprehensive investigation extended to other labor conditions

4-3. Business Continuity Risk

• Suspension of business / debarment by prime contractors and clients (extremely heavy in construction practice)
• Suspension of eligibility to bid for public works
• Loss of trust through media reports
• Impact on recruiting (in particular, loss of trust from foreign workers themselves)

It's wrong to think workers' comp will cover everything

Workers' compensation insurance is the minimum safety net for worker protection when an accident occurs. It does not absolve the company's duty of care. Civil damages from a breach of the duty of care arise separately from workers' compensation payouts.

5. What Statistics Show — Foreign-Worker Accidents Are Rising Sharply

Let's step away from case law and look at just three pieces of the current statistics. They make it clear why both the state and the courts now scrutinize foreign-worker safety so closely.

5-1. Trend in Injuries and Fatalities

According to the MHLW's "Reiwa 6 Status of Workplace Accidents for Foreign Workers," the number of foreign-worker accidents involving four or more days of lost work has moved as follows:

Roughly 4x over 16 years. Part of the backdrop is the rising count of foreign workers (around 2.57 million, a record high as of 2026). But the annual injury rate per 1,000 workers — 2.71 — also exceeds the overall average. Growth in the denominator alone does not explain it.

5-2. Industry Concentration

The industry share in Reiwa 6:

About 66% in manufacturing and construction combined. These industries see many machine-related accidents (caught-in / entangled) and falls from height. The effectiveness of on-site safety training bounces directly back as the accident count.

5-3. Government Policy

The MHLW's 14th Industrial Accident Prevention Plan (FY2023–FY2027) explicitly sets "bring the annual injury rate per 1,000 foreign workers below the overall worker average by Reiwa 9 (2027)" as a target.

In other words, the administration has placed foreign-worker safety in the priority oversight area (the fields inspectors will pursue first). On-site inspector visits are also shifting to a model that pays attention to companies employing foreign workers.

For on-site practitioners — the quick summary

"Foreign-worker accidents have grown roughly 4x in 16 years, manufacturing and construction make up two-thirds, the government has declared it will reduce them by 2027, and that's why inspectors are watching companies that employ foreign workers closely." That's enough to grasp.

6. Five Steps Companies Should Take Now

Drawing on the case law and statistics above, here are five practical countermeasures to lower the risk of a duty-of-care breach. Just working through them in order will significantly advance your defense line in court.

Step 1: Identify Japanese proficiency in advance

At hire, verify each worker's Japanese proficiency (reading, writing, speaking) and record it in an individual file. Suggested fields: JLPT level, ability to read kanji, and a five-grade rating of technical vocabulary comprehension. What matters in court is per-individual records, not group-level assumptions like "everyone here is at least N3."

Step 2: Build a material/language matrix

Manage a matrix of the native languages of your foreign workers and the languages of the materials you hold. Empty cells are "risk zones." Starting from high-priority languages (large headcount, or assigned to dangerous work), build out native-language materials or "Plain Japanese + pictogram" materials.

Step 3: Run and record comprehension tests

After training, run a comprehension test and retrain until they meet a passing standard (e.g., 80% correct). Retain the test paper or e-learning score log for 3+ years. In court, this is the evidence that "the worker did understand."

Step 4: Multilingualize site signage and instructions

Beyond training, equip daily safety instructions, KY (hazard prediction) activities, and danger-zone signage in multiple languages or with pictograms. Designing so that "the worker did not understand the Japanese instructions on site" never happens in the first place is crucial when foreseeability is assessed after an accident.

Step 5: Set up a consultation desk and escalation route

Establish a consultation channel available in the worker's native language (internal interpreter, external service, or via the supervising organization) and a path for the worker to escalate safety concerns to leadership. A structure in which the worker feels danger but cannot speak up will count against the company in any duty-of-care assessment.

7. Common Misconceptions and the Correct View

Finally, three misconceptions you hear often on site. Executives tend to ask "we're fine like this, right?" about each of them.

7-1. "We've delivered statutory training, so the duty of care is fulfilled"

Wrong. Statutory law is the minimum. You'll be asked whether the statutory training was delivered in a form the worker could understand, and whether necessary non-statutory training was also delivered.

7-2. "We handed over the native-language materials, so OK"

This is actually the most common misconception on site. Handing them over is not evidence of "understanding." Only the combined set of comprehension test + signed identity verification + training records counts as substantive training.

7-3. "Workers' comp covers it, so civil damages aren't a concern"

Wrong. Workers' compensation is the minimum coverage for treatment costs and lost wages. The portion above that — pain and suffering, lost future earnings, survivor compensation — is subject to civil damages. A breach finding can lead to tens of millions of yen in liability.

8. Summary

Compressing the points above. The three takeaways legal and general affairs teams must hold:

The duty of care is the employer's obligation grounded in Article 5 of the Labor Contract Act, and it applies fully to foreign workers. The Osaka District Court ruling of July 31, 2024 found a breach in a case where safety training was delivered using Japanese-only materials, and made clear that "formal training records are not a defense."

Foreign-worker accidents have grown roughly 4x in 16 years, and manufacturing and construction account for about 66% of the total. The government has stated in its 14th Industrial Accident Prevention Plan that it will lower the per-1,000 rate for foreign workers, and oversight from both inspectors and courts on company responsibility will only intensify.

Countermeasures: ① identify Japanese proficiency individually, ② build a material/language matrix, ③ retain comprehension test records, ④ multilingualize site signage, ⑤ establish a native-language consultation desk. Just working through these in order will significantly advance your defense line in court.

Key Takeaways

1. The duty of care is grounded in Article 5 of the Labor Contract Act. Compliance with the Industrial Safety and Health Act alone is not fulfillment.
2. The Osaka District Court ruling of July 31, 2024 found Japanese-only safety training to be a breach. "Delivery in a form they can understand" is essential.
3. A breach finding triggers a combined risk of tens of millions of yen in civil damages, business suspension, and criminal referral.
4. Foreign-worker accident counts have grown roughly 4x in 16 years; manufacturing and construction make up about 66%.
5. The countermeasures are a five-piece set: identify Japanese proficiency in advance → build native-language materials → record comprehension tests → multilingualize site signage → set up a consultation desk.

Related Articles

• Complete Guide to Safety and Health Training for Foreign Workers
• Three Approaches to Multilingual Safety Training
• How to Run Safety Training for Foreign Workers in Construction

Primary References

• Labor Contract Act, Article 5 (e-Gov Law Search)
• Industrial Safety and Health Act, Article 59 (e-Gov Law Search)
• Guidelines on Safety and Health Measures for Foreign Workers (MHLW, 2020)
• Reiwa 6 Status of Workplace Accidents for Foreign Workers (MHLW)
• 14th Industrial Accident Prevention Plan (MHLW)
• Workplace Safety Site — Materials for Foreign Workers (MHLW)