Canadian single dad claims Japanese bosses harassed him for having a child: 'It was like junior high'

When Glen Wood told his Japanese bosses he intended to take paternity leave to look after his newborn son, the Canadian financial analyst said he was treated “like I had committed some sort of crime.”

The 47-year-old single father and former manager of global sales at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. in Tokyo alleges he was harassed to the point of mental and physical collapse after he exercised his right to a leave when his son Alexander was born two years ago.

His lawyers have filed a temporary injunction against the Japanese brokerage and have asked a Tokyo court to order the firm reinstate him to full employee status. The company said it encourages its employees to take parental leave. But Wood said he’s a victim of what is known in Japan as patahara — paternity harassment.

Wood said he was incrementally demoted before he was put on unpaid leave in October after rejecting what he said amounted to a low-level clerical position and a more than 50 per cent pay cut.

“It was like junior high school girls’ type of behaviour — they shut me out,” he said. “They wouldn’t invite me to meetings, they wouldn’t look at me, they wouldn’t talk to me.”

In an email to the Post, MUFJ Morgan Stanley said it has “actively encouraged the taking of childcare leave for some time, and addressed the taking of childcare leave by Mr. Glen in good faith.”

“The continued employment of Mr. Glen Wood was also addressed in good faith,” the company said. It declined further comment because the matter is before the courts.

They wouldn't invite me to meetings, they wouldn't look at me, they wouldn't talk to me

Despite one of the most liberal paternity leave laws among developed nations — men, like women, are entitled to a year’s leave, generally at about 60 per cent of their salaries — the number of working men who take paternity leave in Japan has never topped three per cent (the government wants to increase that to 13 per cent by 2020).

Experts have attributed the low uptake not just to men clinging to stereotypical gender roles, but the workplace hostility and harassment men fear they’ll face should they take advantage of “family-friendly” policies, according to the authors of an article published in the September issue of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

A 2014 survey by Japan’s largest organization of labour unions found more than one in 10 men have been refused paternity leave or harassed for even requesting it.

“Apparently, in some companies, ignoring a newborn child and forgoing family obligations is considered a positive step along the career track,” the Japan Times wrote in an editorial.

Wood’s requests for paternity leave were rejected until he took a DNA test proving he was the baby’s father, according to his petition, obtained by Bloomberg.

His own father died in an industrial accident just before his birth. He was raised on his mother’s family’s farm in St. Ann’s, Ont. and attended university in the U.S. on scholarships. He holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania and, over his 18-year career as a financial analyst, he has worked at Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley hired him about six years ago.

According to his lawyers, Wood was harassed solely because he decided to have a child.

“Japanese view employees basically as soldiers,” said Wood, who is fluent in the language. “You’re 100 per cent committed to the company. Men basically don’t go home and, if they try to spend time with family it is a very negative thing.”

But full-time employees are hard to fire because of rigid labour laws and employer contracts, he said. “If they don’t like someone for some reason, they harass them until they quit.”

In August 2015, Wood told his bosses he and his partner were going to have a baby. (He’s now raising the child as a single father.) When he informed them he would need to take a leave, “they were very negative. Their first response was ‘no, there’s nothing, you just can’t do it.’” His son was born in October of that year. Wood was eventually granted leave in December after a DNA test proved paternity. (He and the baby’s mouths were swabbed at the Canadian embassy).

When Wood returned to work three months later, after hiring a full-time nurse to help care for his son, “the first day back my boss called me in and said, ‘you’ve got a child now and basically you can’t do your job.’” Wood, who worked 14- plus hour days managing a global sales team and travelling to overseas offices, said he was reassigned to a menial  job working with clients “that weren’t profitable and likely never would be.”

He grew depressed. “I was run down. I was still working very long hours and they were harassing me all the time,” he said. “They wouldn’t tell me about meetings, or they would give me the wrong time for meetings. It was pretty pedantic type of things they were doing just to try to drive me crazy.”

One day, “I actually fell over at work.” He took a medical leave and, when he came back six months later after his doctor and a company doctor approved his return to work, Wood said he was offered “basically a secretarial position” at less than half his annual salary. He rejected the offer and hired a lawyer.

“They stopped my compensation and now I’m getting nothing, but they’re keeping me as an employee of the company because it’s illegal to fire me,” he said.When Wood returned to work three months later, after hiring a full-time nurse to help care for his son, “the first day back my boss called me in and said, ‘you’ve got a child now and basically you can’t do your job.’” Wood, who worked 14- plus hour days managing a global sales team and travelling to overseas offices, said he was reassigned to a menial  job working with clients “that weren’t profitable and likely never would be.”

He grew depressed. “I was run down. I was still working very long hours and they were harassing me all the time,” he said. “They wouldn’t tell me about meetings, or they would give me the wrong time for meetings. It was pretty pedantic type of things they were doing just to try to drive me crazy.”

One day, “I actually fell over at work.” He took a medical leave and, when he came back six months later after his doctor and a company doctor approved his return to work, Wood said he was offered “basically a secretarial position” at less than half his annual salary. He rejected the offer and hired a lawyer.

“They stopped my compensation and now I’m getting nothing, but they’re keeping me as an employee of the company because it’s illegal to fire me,” he said.

Wood is not a permanent resident and he needs a salary to keep his visa to stay in Japan, a country facing a rapidly shrinking population. Last year, it recorded fewer than one million new births for the first time in its history, according to Geopolitical Monitor.

“Why aren’t people having babies? I’m one very obvious reason why,” Wood said.