Reflecting the precarious working conditions experienced by many non-Japanese laborers, a recent government survey found roughly 4,300 foreign workers lost, or were expected to lose, their jobs as of December.
Over 30 percent of the 486,000 foreign nationals working in Japan are employed as dispatch or contract workers, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare survey found.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200901190070.html
Demanding better job and housing security, a demonstration by 300 Brazilians and their supporters [including members of the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus] in Tokyo Sunday is just the latest sign of the impact that the global economic slowdown is having on Japan’s Brazilian-based workforce.
Waving their national flags across the busy streets of central Tokyo, the demonstrators called out, ‘Give us a chance of employment,’ ‘Stop abandoning us’ and ‘We don’t have secured housing.’
Many temporary Brazilian workers have lost jobs recently, primarily in the car and electronics industries, as Japanese exports have slumped due to the sluggish economy and the Japanese yen’s gains against other currencies. Others have been informed of planned layoffs in the spring.
Dosantos Marcos, one of the protesters, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa he was told to stay at home, since production is slow at the car parts plant where he worked for seven years. The 42-year-old Brazilian has not worked for two months.
Since September last year, when exporters began reducing production, planes to Brazil have been fully booked, according to Hidekichi Hashimoto, the third-generation Japanese-Brazilian President of the non-profit organization ABC Japan.
‘For Japanese companies, we are the easiest to cut because most of us don’t speak Japanese and they think that we have no intention of staying long,’ Hashimoto said.
But about 80,000 of the 320,000 Brazilians living in Japan have acquired the residency visa necessary to stay permanently, he said.
Takaharu Hayashi, director of Koryunet, a Brazilian-Japanese networking association in the Aichi prefecture, has received numerous calls from Brazilians working at auto factories. Toyota Motor Corp, also headquartered in Aichi prefecture, plans to cut 3,000 non- regular workers.
‘Japanese companies are saying they can’t help it when Japanese are also having difficulties keeping their jobs,’ Hayashi said. ‘There is a mentality that Japanese business owners are trying to push Brazilians to the lowest strata because they are less visible.’
As of December last year, more than 85,000 Japanese temporary workers were set to lose their jobs by the end of March.
During the New Year holiday, some 300 unemployed Japanese temporary workers gathered at a park in Tokyo to receive free lodging and food. Most were able to receive government welfare subsidies and find apartments in a week and began job search.
But Hayashi said Brazilians who have not established the necessary relations within Japanese society to help them find resources to tackle their hardships.
‘They don’t have the safety net that Japanese workers do,’ Hayashi said. ‘The gravity of a layoff is weighed much heavier on Brazilians because the government has no system to rescue them from the troubles and their options are much more limited than the Japanese.’
Some 200 Brazilian workers Sunday protested over layoffs by Japanese companies, which are forcing many of them to leave the country despite their community having been integrated in Japan for more than two decades.
The demonstrators, who included mothers with their children [and also included members of the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus], marched through the centre of Tokyo’s glitzy Ginza shopping district, calling for the government’s support for stable employment.
The crowd, many holding Brazilian flags, demanded “employment for 320,000” Brazilians in Japan.
“We are Brazilians!” they shouted in unison. “Companies must stop using us like disposable labour.”
Since 1990 Japan has given special working visas to hundreds of thousands of Brazilians of Japanese descent, many of whom have taken up temporary positions as manual labourers in factories.
Amid the global economic downturn, however, many are being laid off and being forced to return to Brazil. They are often overshadowed by the 85,000 Japanese contract workers also said to be losing their jobs by March.
“No matter how hard we worked in Japan, we are being cut off because we are contract labourers,” said Midori Tateishi, 38, who came to Japan nearly 20 years ago. “Many of us are totally at a loss with children and a housing loan.”
Last year, Japan and Brazil marked the 100th anniversary after the first group of Japanese immigrants left for Brazil in search of a better life.
Brazil is now home to more than 1.2 million people of Japanese descent, or “Nikkeis”, the world’s largest population of ethnic Japanese outside of Japan itself.
Brazilian residents from the Kanto area, Aichi and other prefectures held a demonstration in Tokyo on Sunday, campaigning for greater job security for foreign workers.
Around 350 people [including Nambu FWC members following out Winter Meeting], waving Brazilian flags and carrying banners reading “A chance for employment and education,” walked the 2.5 kilometers from Shimbashi to Ginza.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090119p2a00m0na002000c.html
Tetsushi Sakamoto, parliamentary secretary for internal affairs and communications, on Tuesday apologized for and retracted a remark he made the previous day in which he cast doubt on whether unemployed people at a temporary tent village in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park had the desire to work hard.
“The idea that crossed my mind was that even though the employment situation may be seriously bad, some of them [who had come to the tent village] might not have a serious desire to work. I made the remark without fully grasping the situation,” said Sakamoto, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker in his second term in the House of Representatives. “I disturbed and upset many people. I’d like to retract the remark and deeply apologize to those concerned.”
But he ruled out the possibility of resigning as parliamentary secretary, as had been demanded by the opposition parties.
Referring to the hundreds of laid-off temp workers and others who sought shelter over the weekend at a tent village in Tokyo, the Liberal Democratic Party member said at a New Year’s address Monday, “I wonder if people who are really serious about working gathered there.”
After opposition lawmakers and others objected to his remarks, Sakamoto apologized at a news conference.
“I have caused trouble to concerned parties,” he said.
Parliamentary Secretary for Internal Affairs and Communications Tetsushi Sakamoto on Tuesday retracted his controversial comments questioning whether unemployed people who took shelter in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park over the New Year period seriously possess the will to work.
“I have caused trouble to many people,” Sakamoto, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker from the Kumamoto third district, said as he apologized at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090106p2a00m0na008000c.html
The organizing group for a tent village in Hibiya Park in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, said Sunday the welfare ministry has promised to prepare new shelters for the 500 people there.
The homeless people, many of them believed to be temporary workers recently thrown out of their jobs, have been staying in the park and a nearby welfare ministry hall.
“This situation is a man-made disaster caused by a wrongheaded (government) policy that allows employers to use workers as a disposable resource. We’d like the government to fulfill its responsibility” to protect workers, said [the Secretary General of a union for temporary workers].
The organizing group has called on the ministry to provide housing, food and clothes for the people in the park and hall.
A New Year shelter for Japan’s growing number of jobless had to move from a park into a government building yesterday, after more people than expected flocked to the makeshift ‘tent village’.
The shelter – which was made up of 50 tents – was set up by volunteers and labour unions on New Year’s Eve to offer free food and shelter for homeless people, including laid-off temporary workers who were forced to leave lodging provided by their employers.
The ‘village’ was located at Tokyo’s Hibiya Park, which is in front of the Imperial Hotel, one of Japan’s most luxurious hotels.
But the organisers had to seek the government’s help after more than 300 people flocked to the shelter which could accommodate at most 250 people, said Japanese media.
The government late on Friday decided to allow the homeless to move to a ministry hall where they could stay until tomorrow. Job counselling and other efforts are also under way to place the homeless in other locations.
The tent village highlights the serious social costs of the global recession for the world’s second largest economy.
The government estimates that 85,000 part-time workers have lost or will lose their jobs between now and March. Another 3,300 permanent employees are expected to become jobless over the same period.
Temporary workers have been the first to be fired in the latest wave of cutbacks as Japan’s exports and company investments crashed amid the global financial crisis.
Temporary jobs at manufacturing were illegal before 2004, but today, top companies, including Toyota Motor and Canon, routinely rely on temporary staffing to adjust production to gyrating overseas demand.
Japanese Communist Party leader Kazuo Shii, who visited the village, said the government needs to do more to help the unemployed.
‘It is unforgivable that Japan’s major companies have thrown so many workers out on the streets at the end of the year,’ he said.
For decades, Japan promised lifetime employment at major companies, and government welfare programmes for the jobless are still limited.
The tent village has also drawn some who have been needy for years.
Mr Shigeru Kobayashi, 65, who has been unemployed for four years, lives in the park.
‘People talked about a recovery, but it never got good anyway,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’m unemployed. All I have is a heart.’
Mr Tamotsu Chiba, 55, a theatre producer and volunteer at the tent village, said he found the energy of the volunteers encouraging.
‘There are so many different kinds of people here. This has given me a feeling of hope about Japan,’ he said.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_321783.html
The population of a temporary tent village set up for people who have lost their jobs and housing had exceeded 300 by Friday compared with about 130 on New Year’s Eve when volunteers first established it in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park, organizers said.
“People here have been worn out due to the cold . . . an emergency shelter such as a gymnasium is necessary as soon as possible,” said a leader of the organizers, who said the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry was asked to act fast.
The “year-crossing temp worker village” was set up in the park Wednesday in front of the Imperial Hotel, one of the country’s most luxurious inns, to provide free food and shelter for homeless people, including laid-off temporary workers who have been forced to leave the accommodations of their employers.