Prior to the start of the current Diet session, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the ruling coalition would not submit previously announced bills to revise the Labor Standards Law. The move was seen as being cautionary, since there will be an Upper House election in July and the bills would have contained the so-called white-collar exemption, which says companies no longer have to pay overtime to a certain class of office worker. It is thought the exemption would anger salarymen voters.

This assumption presupposes the obvious, that salarymen resent working overtime for free, and opponents of the exemption refer to it with a number of sardonic nicknames: the "pin-hane (rake-off)" or "fubarai (non-payment)" bills, the "work-more measure" and the "death-from-overwork-promotion" rule. The ruling coalition ignored these snipes by concentrating on what it saw as the exemption's social benefits: company employees can spend more time at home with their families rather than at the office.

Though the business world supports the white-collar exemption, it just as strongly opposes the other revisions being considered for the bill, including stricter penalties for labor-regulation violations, an increase in the minimum wage and a ban on age limits in hiring.