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More children born with a foreign parent

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Japan needs to deal with legal ramifications, experts say

One of every 30 babies born in Japan in 2006 had at least one parent originating from overseas, according to a recent government survey.

The survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry found that the mother, father or both parents of 35,651 babies born here originated from countries other than Japan. This represents about 3.2 percent of the 1.1 million babies born nationwide in 2006.

The survey indicates that an increasing number of foreign nationals coming to Japan for employment or study are settling in the country, experts said.

While the increase in children with at least one non-Japanese parent will broaden the range of cultural background among the country’s residents, a lot more needs to be done to accept and provide legal protection for people from different backgrounds, they said.

The trend reflects the increasing number of foreigners marrying Japanese nationals. Of newly registered marriages in 2006, 6.6 percent involved at least one foreign national.

Of the year’s 49,000 marriages of mixed couples, about 36,000 involved a Japanese husband and non-Japanese wife.

Of the babies with at least one non-Japanese parent, 5.7 percent were born in Tokyo, followed by 4.9 percent in Aichi Prefecture and 4.5 percent in Mie Prefecture.

Kids’ language woes

A record 25,411 foreign students needed assistance with the Japanese language in everyday life or in the classroom as of last September, up 13.4 percent from a year earlier, according to a study on public schools by the education ministry.

It was the fifth consecutive annual increase. The number of such students has increased 46.9 percent since 1997 as more foreign workers have settled here and started to have school-age children.

Of the total, 21,206, or 83.5 percent, said they were receiving Japanese-language education, down 2.1 percentage points.

A panel of experts proposed in June that the education ministry step up training of Japanese-language instructors in light of the growing need.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080804a1.html

Goodwill ceases operations; union stages protest

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Scandal-ridden temp staff agency Goodwill Inc. closed its doors for good Thursday, leaving at least 900 registered workers unable to find new jobs and a union grumbling about unpaid wages and other problems.

According to Goodwill officials, about 1,600 temp workers out of the approximately 6,000 registered with the agency in late June have been directly employed by the companies where they had been dispatched.

The demonstrators chanted slogans such as “take responsibility for disposable employment practices.” Others complained of unpaid overtime allowance.

“They created so many problems, and as a result have dissolved the company. It is despicable that they are not even taking proper measures to clean up afterward,” said a 48-year-old Tokyo man who had been working as a day-contract temp worker for five years.

Although he has been hired by the company to which he was dispatched, he said he has yet to collect about 500,000 yen in pay for overtime work over a two-year period.

Goodwill, once an iconic figure in the world of day-contract temporary work, has been accused of violating the employment security law and temp worker dispatch law. Goodwill engaged in a practice known as “double dispatching,” in which workers are sent to one company but forwarded to other companies. The practice is prohibited because it makes unclear who is responsible for the workers’ safety.

Goodwill also failed to properly write the names of workers on contact papers.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200808020061.html

Nova head avoids fresh indictment

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The Osaka District Public Prosecutor’s Office announced Tuesday it will not indict the former president of Nova Corp. for failing to pay the salaries of non-Japanese teachers and Japanese personnel.

Nozomu Sahashi, 56, is already under indictment for embezzling ¥320 million from reserve funds for corporate workers at the failed foreign-language school chain.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080730b1.html

Future unclear for dispatch workers

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Management, labor at odds over plans to ban daily-paid temporary staff

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry still faces many hurdles with its plan to toughen regulations on temporary dispatch workers due to the gulf between the opinions of management and labor sides on toughening regulations.

A ministry panel issued a report aimed at reversing the government’s longtime policy of deregulating the dispatch worker system out of concern that the unstable working conditions that emerged as a result have led to social disorder.

The current movement toward tougher regulation was prompted by a decision to order Goodwill Co. to discontinue its business due to illegal practices it engaged in when dispatching workers, and a recent indiscriminate stabbing rampage committed by a dispatch worker in the Akihabara district of central Tokyo.

Ruling camp, opposition split

The ruling and opposition parties have agreed to ban, in principle, the dispatch of daily-paid workers. But they disagree about whether to prohibit the dispatch of temporary staff who do not fall within 26 designated specialist skill categories.

While the ruling parties are cautious about imposing a ban in such cases, the opposition camp insists the ban should apply to these workers, too.

In the 20 years since the Temporary Staffing Services Law was enacted, the number of dispatch workers has skyrocketed about 22-fold to 3.21 million.

In recent years, however, the emergence of a large number of working poor and people reduced to spending nights in Internet cafes to help make ends meet is seen as a serious social problem, and most of these people have been found to be daily-paid dispatch workers. Therefore, the government has had no choice other than to shift toward a toughening of regulations.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080730TDY03303.htm

Steps eyed to triple foreign students here

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Goal to enroll 300,000 by 2020

The government, hoping to boost the ranks of foreign students in Japan to 300,000 by around 2020 from 118,500 at present, unveiled steps Tuesday that include simplifying immigration procedures and allowing candidates to complete admission and accommodations applications in their own countries.

“We aim to accept 300,000 students from abroad by around 2020 to make Japan a nation more open to the world, and to develop a ‘global strategy’ to expand the flow of people, materials, money and information between (Japan and) Asia and the world,” says an outline compiled by six ministries, including the education ministry, the Foreign Ministry and the Justice Ministry.

The government hopes to enhance the international competitiveness of the nation’s universities and admit top students from overseas.

“We also aim to continue to make intellectual contributions to foreign countries” by accepting more of their students, the outline says.

The six ministries will work on the plan’s specifics when making budgetary requests for fiscal 2009, which begins next April.

To facilitate student entries, the outline calls for simplifying immigration inspections upon arrival and visa renewal applications.

The government will also select 30 universities to serve as hubs for the program, where students can earn degrees by studying only in English, the outline says.

September admissions will be promoted at schools, and more foreign teachers will be employed to improve Japan’s education and research standards.

The outline assumes more students will continue to live and work in Japan after graduation. It calls for universities to provide job-hunting assistance and for businesses to hire more foreigners.

The government will clarify visa qualifications, including which occupations students can engage in, and consider extending their visas for recruitment activities.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080730a1.html

Some temp workers may be banned from jobs lasting less than a month

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The government is considering banning staffing firms from dispatching one type of worker to jobs that last 30 days or less to enhance the protection of temporary workers, government sources said Sunday.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry initially planned to prohibit temporary staffing agencies from dispatching registered workers for day-labor jobs by submitting a bill to the Diet later in the year to amend the worker dispatch law.

But the ministry is now seeking to expand the scope of labor contracts banned under the law to include those lasting up to 30 days, the sources said.

The dispatch of registration-type temporary workers has been criticized for promoting harsh and unstable labor conditions as well as substandard pay.

A ministry study group on the dispatch of workers is scheduled to compile a report Monday about measures to strengthen the protection of temporary workers, the sources said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080728a3.html

Plight of workers

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…the shift from permanent employment toward part-time and temporary hiring that emerged during the prolonged economic slump has not been reversed, despite the economic turnaround Japan has seen in the past several years.

Many people who failed to land full-time jobs after college graduation are now stuck in nonregular positions as they grow older.

Unlike regular employees, temporary and part-time workers live under the constant threat of job loss.

Their wages are often too low to live a decent life.

This situation clearly represents a major turnaround in the national labor policy. And the government is finally beginning to look more closely at the way many companies hire workers today.

The debate centers on what to do about this dire situation that temporary workers face, including the much-criticized practice of using day laborers.

But day labor dispatch is not the only problem.

An important question is how to steer many in the swollen ranks of nonpermanent workers into full-time jobs.

What must be done to bring wages and working conditions for nonregular workers closer to those of permanent employees?

Labor groups and management have disagreed bitterly on many of these issues. But all parties concerned must now tackle such tough issues head-on.

In an ideal world, each worker would find fulfillment in job satisfaction and have a sense of security. Such a situation would also offer long-term benefits for companies.

Policy efforts addressing this country’s job situation should be designed to pursue this hopeful vision of employment.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200807240094.html

More lawyers needed

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Given the size of its population, Japan, with just 25,000 lawyers, 3,200 judges and 2,400 public prosecutors, has far fewer legal professionals than do Western industrial nations.

What this shortage of lawyers means is that unless people can find reliable legal professionals in their community, the ideal of making judicial services easily accessible to all is just pie in the sky.

Aiming to improve the situation, the government has crafted a policy to increase the number of legal experts to 50,000 by around 2018. To achieve that, the plan calls for raising the number of individuals who pass bar examinations to 3,000 per year.

Last year, 2,099 passed bar exams.

But now the Japan Federation of Bar Associations says that number is too large. It has called for the government to scale back the pace of growth in the legal profession for the time being.

The federation will shortly submit a proposal to the Justice Ministry, which oversees the national bar exams.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura opposes the move.

“I doubt the federation’s judgment in this matter. It is acting in a way that is totally inconsistent with its involvement in judicial reform by suddenly making such a proposal,” Machimura said recently. This criticism is valid, and the government should not change its policy of increasing the number of people who pass bar exams.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200807230080.html

Labor must together fight ‘name-only’ ploys

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“Eliminate long work hours! Store managers in name only deserve dignity.” Such calls were heard loud and clear at a recent rally in Tokyo attended by more than 200 people.

In fact, there was such a large turnout, there weren’t enough seats for everyone.

Branch managers of outlets of chain stores such as McDonald’s Co. (Japan), menswear retailer Konaka Co. and Ninety-nine Plus Inc., which runs Shop 99 convenience stores, all spoke at the event. They described the long hours and harsh working conditions that led each of them to stand up for fair treatment and demand redress.

The day after the rally, McDonald’s announced it would pay overtime allowances to managers of stores under its direct management starting in August under a new pay scheme.

It was a hollow victory.

The company, on the other hand, explained that its overall payroll costs won’t rise as it will abolish the store manager allowance. (McDonald’s, however, said later, in June, that it will delay the introduction of the new pay scheme for a couple of years in the face of the objections. It also said it will start paying overtime to store managers in August as pledged).

It’s an old trick, one done by many companies–to manipulate itemized salaries so that employers can seem to rectify nonpayment of overtime work. As long as such sleight-of-hand methods to evade the spirit of the law are tolerated, no one will bother to challenge top executives who don’t pay overtime.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200807230065.html

Ministry urges labor policy shift

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Corporate efforts to cut labor costs by reducing the number of regular employees and hiring more part-time and dispatch workers are actually stifling productivity and hampering economic growth, a government report said Tuesday.

In its annual white paper on labor and the economy, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare suggested that companies return to Japanese-style, long-term employment with an emphasis on nurturing their work forces and raising the added value per employee.

The ministry called on companies to devise well-planned strategies to hire new graduates and train personnel from a long-term vision.

The white paper for 2008 said such a shift in labor policy would be a key to sustaining economic growth at a time when the population is decreasing.

“Highly productive workers are nurtured through years of a variety of corporate work experiences,” the report said.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200807230084.html