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Keidanren Tells Japan’s Salarymen to Work Less, Have More Kids

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Keidanren, Japan’s biggest business organization, is worried the nation’s workers aren’t having enough sex.

The group urged its 1,632 member companies to start so- called family weeks that give employees more time for playing with the kids and having more children to reverse a declining birth rate. A survey by Japan’s Family Planning Association of about 3,000 married people under age 49 shows couples are having less sex because long work days leave them with too little energy.

In a country where people over 65 will outnumber children two-to-one in five years, companies say they eventually won’t have enough workers. Japan’s birth rate has been falling since 1972 and threatens to shrink the labor force 16 percent by 2030 from 66.6 million workers in 2006, according to the health ministry.

“You must go home early,” Nippon Oil Corp. President Shinji Nishio told staff in a speech for the company’s two-week family campaign, which ends Nov. 22. “The dwindling birthrate and the aging population, along with the responsibility of educating the next generation — these aren’t just somebody else’s problem. We expect all workers’ active participation.”

At Nippon Oil, Japan’s largest refiner, staffers have been forbidden to work on weekends and must get permission to stay past 7 p.m. Textile maker Toray Industries Inc. and All Nippon Airways Co. also hold family weeks this month.

Each evening at 8 p.m. at Nippon Oil’s Tokyo headquarters, the tune ‘When You Wish Upon a Star” blares from loudspeakers. The theme song from Walt Disney Co.’s 1940 movie “Pinocchio,” about a puppet that wanted to be human, is meant to pull at workers’ heartstrings and remind them they should be home with the people they love, said Takefumi Koga, group manager of labor relations.

Drinking Sessions

Colleagues took advantage of the extra time off to arrange after-work drinking sessions, but Koga, 45, the father of two girls, said he managed to rebuff the invitations and go home to his family in the suburbs of Tokyo. When he unexpectedly turned up for dinner, his daughter asked him if he was unwell.

“My family and myself felt awkward at first, but it’s nice to spend the time together,” Koga said. “But I can’t go home earlier every day.”

Spending more time at home may make some white-collar workers, known as salarymen, uneasy in a country where long days and short holidays are the norm. Japan’s average work week in 2006 was the third-longest among industrialized countries after South Korea and the U.S., according to the International Labor Organization, the United Nations agency based in Geneva.

Workers opted to take less than half of their paid vacation last year, averaging just 8.3 days, according to the labor ministry. The word ‘karoshi’ has entered the vocabulary to describe the phenomenon of death from overwork.

Tired and Bored

“It’s a tough challenge for workers, especially the middle-aged ones who have been taught industriousness is the most important virtue,” said Dr. Kunio Kitamura, chairman of the Family Planning Association, who gave details of the survey on married couples at a conference last week. “Going home earlier, if they can put it into action, is a way to fix the declining birthrate.”

Japanese couples are giving up on sex, according to the report, which will be submitted to the Ministry of Health and Welfare next year.

Of the married couples surveyed in 2008, 36.5 percent hadn’t had sex in the previous month, up from 34.6 percent in 2006 and 31.9 percent in 2004, Kitamura said. The couples complained they were too tired from their jobs, or that sex is “boring.”

“The advice for sexless couples is to spend more time together,” Kitamura said. “Just being around, even watching TV in the same room, would be a good start.”

Labor Pains

The country’s birth rate, the average number of children a woman has during her lifetime, started falling in 1972, and stood at 1.34 in 2007, well below the 2.07 required for a stable population, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

“People are the country’s resource,” said Rie Sako, deputy manager of the Tokyo-based National Quality of Life Group that promotes the family weeks at the Keidanren business lobby. “To sustain our standard of living it’s important to stem the contraction in population.”

Family weeks are only a first step, Sako said. Leaders of Japanese companies need to get behind efforts to reduce hours throughout the year.

At Nippon Oil, family weeks are just one of the measures the company has introduced to try to reduce overtime, in part to decrease costs and improve efficiency. In October last year the company started a “Sayonara Overwork” campaign, and posted signs in offices listing eight ways to go home earlier.

Like his colleague Koga, Risuke Shimizu, 37, a Nippon Oil spokesman, has had to resist the temptation to drop by a bar instead of going straight home during family weeks, he said. Normally he gets back so late his two young children are already asleep.

“They came to the front door to welcome me home when I came back earlier during the weeks,” he said. “It’s quite good.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a6qq53CVLzUg&refer=home

Prejudice among obstacles facing non-Japanese tenants

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With a falling population, a shrinking tax base and a shortage of carers for its increasing number of elderly, calls are growing for Japan to allow in a large influx of foreign workers to plug the gap. The question is: When they come, will they be able to find a place to stay?

With its “shikikin” (deposit) and “reikin” (key money)  which mean forking out several months’ rent upfront and tracking down a guarantor willing to take on the payments in case of default Japan’s real estate system is notorious for the high demands it makes of potential tenants. Even if an individual is able to pay all the fees and find a guarantor, foreigners often hit a brick wall when looking for a place to live simply because they are not native-born Japanese.

“You often hear about racial prejudice in the U.S., but it seems the Japanese aren’t really ones to talk,” Morii said with a sad smile. “We Japanese have been going abroad for the past 100 years, and maybe experienced some discrimination there, but we’ve still been able to establish ourselves. . . . I feel bad for foreigners who studied hard to come here, and who are treated like this.”

Discrimination is an issue that will need to be tackled if Japan is serious about creating a more international society. Tourism minister Nariaki Nakayama alluded to this problem days after his appointment in September, when he bemoaned the fact that Japanese “do not like nor desire foreigners” and called for Japanese to “open their hearts” to diverse cultures. Nakayama was sacked days later.

Calls to allow in more foreign workers to Japan have grown louder as the implications of a rapidly graying society on Japan’s global clout and industrial might have sunk in. The Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) last month urgently called for an influx of “medium-skilled” immigrant labor. In June, former Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa presented a proposal on behalf of some 80 lawmakers calling for the government to raise the ratio of foreign residents in Japan to 10 percent of the population within 50 years.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20081118zg.html

Lower house OKs bill to remove marriage requirement for nationality

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The House of Representatives at its plenary session on Tuesday passed a bill to amend the Nationality Law to enable a child born out of wedlock to a Japanese man and a foreign woman to obtain Japanese nationality if the father recognizes his paternity.
The bill will be immediately sent to the House of Councillors and is expected to pass the upper chamber for enactment by the end of the current parliamentary session through Nov. 30.

The government proposed revisions to the law after the Supreme Court ruled in June unconstitutional a provision in the law requiring parents to be married in order for their children to be granted Japanese nationality.

The bill includes a provision for the imposition of prison terms of up to one year or fines of up to 200,000 yen on anyone falsely filing for the paternity of a Japanese man to be recognized in order to secure Japanese nationality.

A group of lawmakers mainly from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are against holding a vote, saying the revision could lead to an increase in false nationality claims.

At present, a child born outside a marriage can obtain nationality if the Japanese father admits paternity when the child is still in the mother’s womb. In other words, nationality is not granted to a child who receives paternity recognition after birth.

The envisioned amendment would enable nationality to be given to any child born out of wedlock as long as he or she receives parental recognition.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94H47AO0&show_article=1

LDP panel mulls easing law on dual citizenship

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Mixed couples’ kids could have two nationalities

Liberal Democratic Party member Taro Kono said Thursday he has submitted a proposal to an LDP panel he heads calling for the Nationality Law to be revised to allow offspring of mixed couples, one of whom being Japanese, to have more than one nationality.

The panel will scrutinize the proposal, but there is no time limit to formalize it as “this is not something that needs to be done anytime soon,” he said.

Also under the proposal, foreigners would be able to obtain Japanese citizenship without giving up their original one. But the proposal does not say whether those who had had multiple nationalities and gave up one or more to retain their Japanese citizenship can regain other nationalities.

The proposal would also affect babies born in countries that grant nationality to those born there regardless of their parents’ nationalities, including the United States, Brazil and Australia.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081114a1.html

Education woes beset Brazilian children

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Symposium highlights the need for comprehensive planning in the face of growing immigration

Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, said Japan should be prepared to raise the ratio of foreign immigrants to 10 percent of the population in the next 50 years as the population rapidly declines.

Sakanaka stressed that immigration policy should place importance on nurturing the talents of newcomers by providing more education and training opportunities.

“There is also a need for a change in the Japanese mind-set toward foreigners,” Sakanaka said.

Brazilian lawyer Etsuo Ishikawa, who provides legal advice for the Brazilian community in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, which has the largest population of Brazilians in Japan, said the primary cause of problems besetting the immigrants is the lack of social welfare coupled with unstable employment conditions.

“When the basics of working conditions are met, more parents will be able to appreciate the importance of providing education for their children,” he said.

Ishikawa stressed that direct employment by companies must be promoted as many Brazilians are temporary workers in unstable conditions without social security.

“The government must implement policies that secure the fundamental rights of the people who lead their lives here,” Ishikawa said, adding that giving voting rights to non-Japanese residents in local elections is another important issue that needs consideration.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081114f1.html

Nova refugees: Where are they now?

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‘All the schools are closed.’

That’s the text message I received on the morning of Oct. 26, 2007, from a fellow Nova teacher. I went to my school later that day to find the lights off, the doors locked and no one around. Like most of Nova Corp.’s hundreds of language centers, it was never to re-open. Japan’s largest conversation school chain filed for protection from creditors the same day. The company was declared legally bankrupt a month later.

In the period leading up to that fateful day, there had been plenty of signs that things weren’t right, says Briton Marc Davies, a former area manager. “The hardest part for me at first was dealing with a delayed paycheck. It was delayed by about four or five days in July. Then in August, because I was a senior supervisor, my pay was delayed again. The crunch really came in September when I was not paid at all. That was very scary. I was living off a credit card. I had no idea when and if I would get paid again.”

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20081111zg.html

Citizenship for kids still tall order

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Many observers of the Nationality Law have welcomed the government’s proposed revision approved Tuesday by the Cabinet that will soon allow hundreds of children born out of wedlock to Japanese men and foreign women to obtain Japanese nationality if the father recognizes paternity even after birth.

Despite what seems to be a positive move, however, some also predict many challenges ahead before the children entitled to Japanese nationality can actually acquire it.

“The revision will mean a lot to the children, because (nationality) is part of their identity and will secure them a more stable status and future,” said Rieko Ito, secretary general of the Tokyo-based Citizens Network for Japanese-Filipino Children, which supports Filipino women and children in Japan who often live under permanent resident status.

The scheduled amendment is in line with the June 4 Supreme Court ruling that a provision of the law on the status of children born out of wedlock was unconstitutional.

Today, the law still reads that a child born out of wedlock between a Japanese father and a foreign mother can get Japanese nationality only if the father admits paternity during the mother’s pregnancy, or if the couple get married before the child turns 20, but not after birth.

Thus, children whose fathers acknowledge paternity after their birth are not granted Japanese nationality, which the top court declared a violation of equal rights.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081105f2.html

Bill outlawing daily dispatch of temps OK’d

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A bill to effectively ban staff agencies from dispatching workers on a daily basis was approved by the government Tuesday, boosting the protection of temporary workers.

The amendment to the worker dispatch law would bar staffing agencies from dispatching registered workers for day work or less than 30 days’ employment. But people in 18 professional areas, including interpreters and secretaries, would be exempt.

The dispatch of temporary workers on a daily basis has been criticized for spawning young working poor and widening Japan’s social disparities.

The illegal dispatch of workers has made headlines as many firms have been found to have issued work orders and instructions to employees dispatched by staffing agencies. The bill would enable the government to advise such companies in violation of the law to form direct employment contracts with workers being sent by manpower agencies.

The amendment would take effect next Oct. 1. Some key provisions of the amendment, including banning the dispatch of day workers, would not take effect until April 1, 2010.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20081105a1.html

Japan’s “working poor” at risk as recession hits

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When Miwa Takeuchi found out her part-time clerical job had been outsourced to a Japanese temp staffing agency and she’d have to work longer hours for lower pay, she was relieved. At least she was still employed.

Three years later, Takeuchi, a single mother and one of Japan’s growing ranks of “working poor” who struggle to get by on annual income of $20,000 or less, takes a darker view.

“When I thought about it, I realized that the more I worked, the less I got,” she said. “I started out as a regular worker, but … over the past decade, I have just gotten poorer.”

Takeuchi is not alone.

A decade of corporate cost-cutting and labor market deregulation has transformed Japan’s employment landscape. More than a third of all employees are non-regular workers without job security — part-timers, contract workers and temps — and more than 10 million are “working poor.”

That’s a sharp contrast from the 1980s, when more than 80 percent of workers had job security and most felt middle class.

Now, as the global financial crisis sweeps over the economy, non-regular workers risk being hit fast and hard, raising concerns the slump will be steeper and the impact more concentrated on the most vulnerable compared to past downturns.

The number of fixed-term workers at Toyota Motor Corp, for example, fell to 6,800 last month from around 9,000 in July-September last year in response to weaker demand, a spokesman for Japan’s leading car maker said.

“In countries with a high level of atypical work conditions, in many cases precarious working conditions, there is a much greater risk that in times of recession these groups are hit first and most,” said Michael Forster, a social policy analyst at the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

POLITICAL AGENDA

A 2006 report showing poverty in Japan had risen to one of the highest levels among the OECD’s 30 member countries, largely because of the gap between regular and non-regular workers, shocked many and helped put the topic on the political agenda.

“Japan already has the fourth-largest ‘inequality’ levels of all major countries. Who would have predicted this just 10 years ago?” Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said in a speech at a recent party convention.

“If we continue to ignore inequality, our economy will eventually stop functioning and Japanese society will collapse.”

The Democrats have made improving job security and shrinking income gaps a key part of their platform ahead of an election that must be held by September 2009 and could come sooner.

An OECD report this month showed income gaps shrank somewhat between 1999 and 2004, mainly because the rich became less wealthy. Yet the report still ranked Japan fourth among its member countries in terms of poverty, defined as those living on less than half the median income.

Not to be outdone, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is promising subsidies for firms that hire so-called “senior freeters” — part-time job hoppers aged 25-39, many of whom graduated during Japan’s 1994-2004 “Employment Ice Age,” when firms struggling with economic stagnation shied away from hiring.

“Companies can’t just invest in capital goods. They have to invest in workers too or they won’t buy things,” said LDP lawmaker Masazumi Gotoda, who helped draft his party’s proposals.

Such older “freeters,” estimated to total nearly 1 million last year, have become what media call a “Lost Generation,” trapped in unstable, low-paying jobs lacking unemployment benefits or health insurance.

“We have had a very rigid employment scheme in which recruits to large companies are limited to those who just graduated … so those who graduated during the ‘Ice Age’ cannot get good jobs even when the economy recovers,” said Naohiro Yashiro, an economics professor at International Christian University.

“LOST GENERATION”

Among the most vulnerable are daily temps who find employment through staffing agencies and earn about 7,000 yen ($70) a day at factories, construction sites and in other low-skilled jobs.

“I never know whether I’ll have a job until the evening before,” one 36-year-old man who works as a daily temp, mostly on delivery trucks, told a recent symposium on the topic.

“A job might last a week, or there might be no work at all, so I don’t have a fixed monthly income,” the man said, adding that he survives only because he lives at home with his parents.

Activists and labor lawyers argue that while the system helps companies fine-tune employment in response to ups and downs in the economy, the cost to society as a whole is heavy.

“At a micro-level, companies may feel that this is good for them to be able to adjust employment easily, but if large numbers of people cannot support themselves, social uncertainty will rise,” said Shuichiro Sekine, secretary-general of a temp union.

“Many workers will have to rely on welfare, and that’s a big loss for society overall.”

And though politicians talk of remedies, activists such as Chieki Akaishi of support group Single Mothers’ Forum are wary.

“They’ve realized they must listen to such people or they can’t get votes, but they aren’t trying to change the fundamental social framework to include equal pay for equal work and equal treatment for regular and non-regular workers,” she said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE49T03A20081030?sp=true

1 year on, Nova’s failure leaves scars

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Even though it has been a year since Nova applied for court protection under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law, the central government has done little to ensure the private language school industry improves its operations.

The failure of Nova, which was the largest language school in the nation, has sowed public distrust in the industry.

Moreover, many former Nova students have not been compensated for tuition fees paid in advance, even though the school’s operations have been taken over by Nagoya-based G.communication Co.

On Thursday, a group set up by former Nova students submitted a petition to Seiko Noda, state minister in charge of consumer affairs, requesting stronger measures to protect language school students.

“I’d like the authorities to investigate [the matter] in depth so similar problems don’t happen,” a 35-year-old female former Nova student said.

Although there are no regulations on the establishment of language schools, the law that covers such businesses was revised in 1999 to regulate them to some extent, allowing students to cancel contracts with the schools, for example.

Although Nova had many contract issues before it failed, the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry supervising the law was slow to take punitive measures against Nova, such as banning it from entering into contracts with new students.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20081027TDY07301.htm