Dispatch
Tent village residents still out of work
A tent village [known as Haken Mura] for laid-off temporary workers set up in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park over the New Year’s holidays was officially declared closed Sunday at a symposium to discuss unemployment issues, but many of those who stayed in the village remain jobless.
The group that organized the village, consisting of labor unions [including NUGW Tokyo Nambu] and citizens’ groups, reported at the symposium the results of a questionnaire it recently conducted on around 260 of the 630 unemployed people who stayed in the tent village or attended advisory meetings in the spring.
According to the survey, which received responses from 108 of the 260 people, only 13 had been able to find jobs while seven had been hired as temporary workers, mostly earning ¥200,000 or less per month. Fifty-five respondents were still searching for jobs and 48 said they had not been feeling well.
“The people who ended up coming to the tent village have disadvantages from the start, considering their educational and professional backgrounds, and many of them are suffering from depression triggered by the fact that they cannot find jobs,” a member of the group, which will disband Tuesday, said.
Eighty-one respondents are receiving welfare benefits from local governments and nine others are receiving unemployment insurance payments, and at least 46 were in debt.
Group organizing tent village for unemployed to be disbanded
The group that set up a tent village for laid-off temporary workers in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park over the New Year holidays will disband at the end of this month, the chief of the group said Wednesday.
Makoto Yuasa said his group has decided to end its activities after helping to change peoples’ perceptions of the situation surrounding temporary workers but will continue to support the unemployed through consultation services.
“People began to recognize that the lack of social safety nets is an underlying problem behind the layoffs and firings of temporary workers,” Yuasa said of the significance of his group’s activities. “It had earlier been said that such workers themselves were responsible (for their situations).”
Yuasa, a social activist who has tackled poverty issues in Japan since the mid-1990s, served as “mayor” of the Hibiya tent village [known as Hakenmura] that drew attention as a social problem after an increasing number of business corporations cut jobs amid the deepening economic crisis.
His group’s members, who include members of labor unions [including the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu] and civic groups, were originally scheduled to disband early this year, but they have been providing follow-up employment and other support for the people who lived in emergency shelters in the tent village.
The village “shed light on the need to promote collaboration between people engaged in social welfare and labor rights movements,” Yuasa said.
http://www.pddnet.com/news-ap-group-organizing-tent-village-for-unemployed-to-be-062409/
5,631 temps killed, injured in work accidents in 2008
A total of 5,631 dispatch workers were killed or injured in work-related accidents in 2008, many of them inexperienced workers in the manufacturing industry, according to a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry report.
While the figure is 254 lower than in 2007, it is still high–more than eight times the number injured or killed in 2004, when a ban on dispatching workers to the manufacturing industry was lifted.
The manufacturing industry accounted for 64.8 percent of cases–62.9 percent of whom were workers with less than one year’s experience at the companies in question.
Exploited workers lose $20B a year
The exploitation of workers is a huge business worldwide.
People forced to work without pay collectively lose more than $20 billion a year in earnings, according to a report from the United Nations International Labour Organization released Tuesday.
Global profits from human trafficking and forced labor have reached $36 billion, according to the United Nations, and that sum is climbing.
“Forced labor is the antithesis of decent work,” ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in a statement as the report became public. “It causes untold human suffering and steals from its victims.”
“It is the vulnerable who suffer the most” in times of economic crisis like the present, the report says.
Japan to Immigrants: Thanks, But You Can Go Home Now
When union leader Francisco Freitas has something to say, Japan’s Brazilian community listens. The 49-year old director of the Japan Metal and Information Machinery Workers called up the Brazilian Embassy in Tokyo April 14, fuming over a form being passed out at employment offices in Hamamatsu City, southwest of Tokyo. Double-sided and printed on large sheets of paper, the form enables unemployed workers of Japanese descent — and their family members — to secure government money for tickets home. It sounded like a good deal to the Brazilians for whom it was intended. The fine print in Portuguese, however, revealed a catch that soured the deal: it’s a one-way ticket with an agreement not to return.
Japan’s offer to minority communities in need has spawned the ire of those whom it intends to help. It is one thing to be laid off in an economic crisis. It is quite another to be unemployed and to feel unwanted by the country where you’ve settled. That’s how Freitas and other Brazilians feel since the Japanese government started the program to pay $3,000 to each jobless foreigner of Japanese descent (called Nikkei) and $2,000 to each family member to return to their country of origin. The money isn’t the problem, the Brazilians say; it’s the fact that they will not be allowed to return until economic and employment conditions improve — whenever that may be. “When Nikkei go back and can’t return, for us that’s discrimination,” says Freitas, who has lived in Japan with his family for 12 years. (See pictures of Japan and the world.)
With Japan’s unemployment rate on the rise — it reached a three-year high of 4.4% in February — the government is frantic to find solutions to stanch the flow of job losses and to help the unemployed. The virtual collapse of Japan’s export-driven economy, in which exports have nearly halved compared to the first two months of last year, has forced manufacturers to cut production. Temporary and contract workers at automotive and electronics companies have been hit especially hard. Hamamatsu has 18,000 Brazilian residents, about 5% of the total in Japan, and is home to the nation’s largest Brazilian community. After immigration laws relaxed in 1990, making it easier for foreigners to live and work in Japan, Brazilians have grown to be the country’s third largest minority, after Koreans and Chinese. But as jobs grow scarce and money runs out, some Nikkei ironically now face the same tough decision their Japanese relatives did 100 years ago, when they migrated to Brazil.
Japan can scarcely afford to lose part of its labor force, or close itself off further to foreigners. Japan, with its aging population that is projected to shrink by one-third over the next 50 years, needs all the workers it can get. The U.N. has projected that the nation will need 17 million immigrants by 2050 to maintain a productive economy. But immigration laws remain strict, and foreign-born workers make up only 1.7% of the total population. Brazilians feel particularly hard done by. “The reaction from the Brazilian community is very hot,” says a Brazilian Embassy official. The embassy has asked Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare to “ease the conditions” of reentry for Brazilians who accept the money. (Paradoxically, the Japanese government had recently stepped up efforts to help Brazilian residents, with programs such as Japanese-language training and job-counseling.) This particular solution to unemployment, however, is perceived as a misguided gift. “Maybe there were good intentions, but the offer was presented in the worst way possible,” says the Brazilian official. The program applies to Brazilians who have long-term Nikkei visas, but restricts their right — and that of their family members — to reentry until jobs are available in Japan. The terms are vague and will probably stay that way. Tatsushi Nagasawa, a Japanese health ministry official says it’s not possible to know when those who accept the money will be allowed back into Japan, though the conditions for reentry for highly skilled positions might be relaxed.
The Brazilian community plainly needs some help. The Brazilian embassy normally pays for between 10 and 15 repatriations each year, but in the last few months it has already paid for about 40. Since last September, Carlos Zaha has seen many in his Hamamatsu community lose their jobs. In December, he helped start Brasil Fureai, or “Contact Brazil,” an association to help unemployed Brazilian residents find jobs. He’s thankful to the Japanese government for the offer of assisted repatriation, but says the decision will be a rough one for workers. “I don’t think [the government] thought this through well,” Zaha says. “If someone is over 50 years old and is already thinking of returning to Brazil then it might work. But there are many people in their 20s and 30s, and after two or three years they’re going to want to come back to Japan — and they won’t be able to.”
Lenine Freitas, 23, the son of the union leader, lost his job at Asmo, a small motor manufacturer, one month ago, but says he plans to stay in Japan and work. Freitas says that there would be no problem if the Japanese government set a term of, say, three years, after which Brazilians who took the money could return. But after nine years working at Suzuki Motor Corp., he thinks that the government should continue to take responsibility for foreigners in Japan. “They have to help people to continue working in Japan,” he says. “If Brazilians go home, what will they do there?”
And if Nikkei Brazilians, Peruvians and others who have lost their jobs go home, what will Japan do? Last week, Prime Minister Taro Aso unveiled a long-term growth strategy to create millions of jobs and add $1.2 trillion to GDP by 2020. But the discussion of immigration reform is notoriously absent in Japan, and reaching a sensible policy for foreign workers has hardly got under way. Encouraging those foreigners who would actually like to stay in Japan to leave seems a funny place to start.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892469,00.html
English lessons on the cheap
So imagine my surprise when I found out a week from the end of the school year that I would not be returning to my school. The local Board of Education had changed the company that supplied assistant language teachers.
Supportive teachers advised me to talk to the BOE and ask for a direct hire — after all, they would not want to lose the only qualified foreign teacher they had, would they? This made sense, particularly since the current employment practice of the BOE was against the ministry of education’s advice. Therefore, I made my appointment with the local BOE, and clearly outlined the benefits for the BOE and school in my direct employment. Unfortunately none of this mattered: I received a response of “impossible” as soon as the words were out of my mouth. It was at this point I realized the truth: They were not the supporters of education I had imagined. The continuity of students’ learning was not important to them. The effort I had put in meant nothing. The fact that both the Japanese teacher of my class and myself were leaving did not matter, because they had a cheaper deal with their new company.
What expectations can Japan have from its English language programs when everything comes down to saving a few yen? The influx of “dispatch” companies, often breaking labor law by illegally dispatching temp workers to schools under the instruction of the BOE or principal, or breaking educational law if they are not, has created a situation where the pay is so low that those who will accept it are increasingly ill-equipped to teach, often with no experience, qualifications or even higher education, obtaining visas through marriage or working holidays. Many are from non-native English backgrounds with poor English ability and heavy accents.
It is time that the ministry of education opened its eyes to the practices of local boards of education. There are many qualified teachers who are willing to accept the amount paid to the third-party dispatch companies, but unless action is taken BOEs will continue to take the easy way out when hiring.
Marriage rate for non-regular employees half that of regular employees
Single males in non-regular employment have a much lower marriage rate than that of regular employees, a government survey has shown.
Moreover, the birth rate is lower among female non-regular workers than their regularly-employed peers, according to the survey.
The results of the survey conducted by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry suggest that the low marriage and birth rates are due partly to Japan’s insecure job market.
“Salaries for irregular employees are lower, and it’s harder for irregular workers to take child-care leave. These factors apparently discourage them from marrying and having children,” a ministry official said.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090313p2a00m0na002000c.html
October-March temp firings up 26% to 157,806
An estimated 157,806 nonregular employees, mainly temporary workers in the manufacturing sector, are expected to lose their jobs between last October and next month amid the recession, a labor ministry survey showed Friday.
The estimated number of job cuts during the six-month period represents a 26.4 percent rise from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s projection in its January survey, a finding highlighting the severity of the employment conditions of Japanese companies.
Temporary workers accounted for 107,375, or 68.0 percent, of the estimated 157,806 jobs being lost during the October-March period.
The remainder includes 28,877 contract employees and 12,988 workers hired by employment agencies.
Nonregular workers axed hits 158,000
Nonregular workers who have lost their jobs or will become unemployed during the October-March period number 157,806 throughout the country, more than five times the corresponding figure in late November, a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey showed Friday.
The ministry conducted the survey by collating data on nonregular employees from the ministry’s Hello Work job-placement offices and regional labor bureaus across the country as of Feb. 18.
The latest figure is about 33,000 more than that recorded in a similar survey as of Jan. 26, signifying a surge from the figure of 30,067 as of Nov. 25 in the ministry’s first poll of this kind.
The latest survey results mean the number of nonregular workers who have lost or will lose their jobs has increased fivefold in the past three months.
Nonregular employees who were let go before the expiry of their contracts accounted for 41.4 percent of those surveyed.
The Labor Contract Law bans the dismissal of nonregular workers before the end of their employment contract without good reason.