Growing Reliance on Temps Holds Back Japan’s Rebound

by

Firms Increasingly Add Part-Time Workers; Spending Power Lags

The rise of temps began in the 1990s as Japan entered its long slump and low-cost nations such as China posed unprecedented competition. To compete, Japanese companies shifted large chunks of their manufacturing capacities overseas. At home, cost-cutting came slowly, partly because layoffs were taboo.

Then, labor-law deregulation gave companies a new way to restructure, while keeping some of their treasured manufacturing capabilities in Japan.

Until the late ’90s, worker-friendly laws forbade temporary-labor contracts except for a few specialized areas, such as computer programming. A change in 1999 allowed temp agencies to dispatch workers to many more types of jobs. And in 2004, manufacturers were allowed to use workers sent by temporary-help agencies.

That change encouraged companies such as Toyota and Canon Inc. to start hiring temps en masse. At Canon and its subsidiaries and affiliates, the number of part-timers and temps nearly quadrupled from 2003 to last June, to about 40,000, according to securities filings. Full-timers are more numerous, at 127,000, but their numbers rose a more modest 24%.

Temps find it difficult to become full-time. When the economy began recovering about five years ago and companies needed more full-time workers, they got them by hiring fresh graduates. In a 2006 survey by staffing agency Pasona Group, two-thirds of companies responding said they were reluctant to make part-timers or temps full time. Many firms cited a lack of skills. Temps rarely get much training from their employers.

Longtime temps say conditions have deteriorated. Yoko Mitome, 49, was a sales executive at a travel agency for two decades, jetting about and planning package tours to exotic spots. She lost this $50,000-a-year job in 1998 as the employer sought to cope with falling sales near the bottom of Japan’s long slump. She got a temp job as an operator for international calls at a unit of phone company KDDI Corp.

Since then, the hourly wages have stayed fairly stable but the company has stopped paying transportation expenses and good-attendance bonuses, has shortened breaks and has shortened employment contracts to three or six months from a year.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB119939511325465729-lMyQjAxMDE4OTA5NzMwOTc1Wj.html

Interac in the News – Punishment for Being Sick

by

An article from January, 2008 about the fact that Interac ALTs do not get all of what they are entitled to by law.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080105f1.html

THIS FOREIGN LAND
Assistant language teachers in trying times

By KANAKO TAKAHARA
Staff writer
Last of four parts

In November, Samantha Bouton, an assistant language teacher working at a public elementary school in the rural town of Shibayama, Chiba Prefecture, had a fever of 38.5 degrees and was diagnosed as suffering bronchitis.

Because of her illness, Bouton, a 25-year-old U.S. native from Oregon who has been teaching in Japan’s public schools since 2004, had to take leave for two weeks.

But her employer, Interac, a temp staff dispatch agency and leading provider of ALTs in Japan, told her she had already used up her seven days of annual paid leave — less than the 12 days she is entitled to under labor law — to cover the days she was sick.

Read more

Assistant language teachers in trying times

by

Meanwhile, local boards of education have started to realize they cannot get competent, experienced teachers either by subcontracting to private firms or through the JET program because many of them come to Japan just out of college without any background in education.

Taito Ward in Tokyo said it plans to stop outsourcing ALTs to private companies. It is considering advertising for candidates on its Web site and asking them to give a presentation on the kind of lessons they plan to offer as part of its screening process.

The city of Musashino on the outskirts of Tokyo plans to seek applicants among native English speakers who live in the area instead of subcontracting from private companies.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080105f1.html

Attention G-communication teachers and staff

by

G-Education and its parent company G-communication repeated NOVA’s pattern of broken promises when they suddenly announced the dismissals of 800 former NOVA teachers and staff who had been promised work at G-comm in January. The declaration, coming just a week after the company president publicly repeated assurances of re-employment, leaves many facing once again the problems of housing, visa extensions, and no job.

The NUGW Tokyo Nambu office will be open Sunday, January 6, from 2:00 to 6:00 pm, for G-communications teachers and staff who wish to join GUTS (G Union of Teachers and Staff). The union is open to those who were promised employment at the company, including people currently working at G, and those who received letters of dismissal during December. We have submitted demands that G-comm honour its committment to full re-employment; join us to insist that G-comm take responsibility for its actions.

Agencies reap tidy profits as temp numbers soar

by

A record-high 3.21 million people worked at least one temporary job in fiscal 2006, an increase of 26.1 percent–another record high–from the previous fiscal year, according to a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry report.

The annual turnover of temporary agencies was about 5.42 trillion yen–an increase of 34.3 percent from fiscal 2005, the report said.

However, the 30 percent to 40 percent margins being creamed off by these agencies has come under attack from temporary worker labor unions and other groups. Under the Temporary Staffing Services Law, owners of temporary staffing agencies must report once a year to the ministry on matters such as the number of temps they dispatch and the dispatch fees they receive. A total of 41,966 businesses made such reports to the ministry in fiscal 2006.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/20071230TDY02308.htm

Foreign teachers still waiting for jobs

by

AUSTRALIANS are among hundreds of foreign teachers who had been hoping for fresh jobs to start the new year but remain unemployed after a firm taking over part of the collapsed Nova language school chain stopped hiring.

Nova, whose schools were once ubiquitous across Japanese cities, filed for bankruptcy protection in October, leaving thousands of foreign teachers without income.

Nagoya-based G.communication was selected by Nova’s rehabilitation administrators to take over the running of some schools and had hired 1647 foreign teachers by today.

But the company said it was also rejecting applications of some 600 foreign instructors from Nova.

G.communication plans to open only 126 of the 600 schools originally operated by Nova throughout the nation, the company said.

The diversified corporation already runs English schools in northern Japan along with other businesses such as restaurant chains.

“Other companies in the group also have needs for workers,” the statement said.

The company acknowledged that most of the 600 rejected teachers had hoped to start working from January.

The firm had given them ¥150,000 ($1508) each in financial support for the holiday season, with many of the teachers taking trips home.

Nova had an estimated 400,000 students and 6000 employees on its books, 4500 of them foreigners – many of them young people looking to spend a few years in Japan.

Embassies of English-speaking nations had started helplines for former Nova teachers, some of whom had declared they were ready to offer language lessons in exchange for food.

Foreigners with few skills other than speaking their native languages were able to make a comfortable living teaching in Japan at the height of the 1980s economic boom, but the jobs have since become less lucrative.

Nova was founded in 1981 and became the leader in the industry. It filed for protection from creditors four months after the government ordered it to halt part of its operations over insufficient refunds for students.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22975092-31037,00.html

Firm reneges on promised jobs for Nova teachers

by

National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, a Tokyo-based labor union [and predecessor of Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union] whose ranks include many ex-Nova teachers, also decried G.education’s sudden announcement.

“It was all very sudden. It was a big shock to people,” said Catherine Campbell, who is currently in charge of the Nova case at the union. “They don’t know what they are going to do.”

According to Campbell, teachers were notified of G.education’s decision last Friday via e-mail.

She criticized G.education for breaking its promise and for the timing of its bad news, coming when many job aspirants had returned to their homes overseas for Christmas.

They had hoped to come back to Japan and work, but now that the jobs they were expecting are unlikely to materialize, they may find themselves unable to pay the rent for their apartments full of their belongings, she said.

Yujiro Hiraga, president of [Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union’s predecessor] National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, said the union will seek collective bargaining because G.education has not provided a clear explanation for its decision.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20071226a1.html

The G.rinch That Stole Christmas

by

G.communications has gone back on its promise to hire all former NOVA teachers who apply, announcing on Christmas Eve that 600 applicants would not be rehired.

Reasons given for the decision include difficulties in reopening schools, and the company’s plans to relocate the Ochanomaryugaku (interactive TV lessons) operation overseas in order to cut costs.

This is an abrupt change from the company which assured union representatives just a week earlier that all applicants would be hired. NOVA teachers who went home for the holidays, expecting to return to work in January, are now reeling from this second betrayal.

NUGW Tokyo Nambu and the General Union will be demanding collective bargaining with G.communications later this week.

Up to ex-NOVA 800 teachers left out in cold by new owners

by

Up to 800 foreign language teachers formerly employed by NOVA Corp. will not be hired by the failed English conversation school chain’s new owners.

Officials at Nagoya-based G.communication Group said they are looking into finding employment for around 200 ex-NOVA teachers with affiliate companies, leaving the remaining 600 or so unemployed.

G.communication Group bought out NOVA after it filed for protection from creditors on Oct. 26, leaving the failed conversation chain to go through bankruptcy proceedings exactly one month after its collapse.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071225p2a00m0na009000c.html

Jobs for life

by

Death by overwork in Japan

HARA-KIRI is a uniquely Japanese form of suicide. Its corporate equivalent is karoshi, ?death by overwork?. Since this was legally recognised as a cause of death in the 1980s, the number of cases submitted to the government for the designation has soared; so has the number of court cases that result when the government refuses an application. In 1988 only about 4% of applications were successful. By 2005 that share had risen to 40%. If a death is judged karoshi, surviving family members may receive compensation of around $20,000 a year from the government and sometimes up to $1m from the company in damages. For deaths not designated karoshi the family gets next to nothing.

Now a recent court ruling has put companies under pressure to change their ways. On November 30th the Nagoya District Court accepted Hiroko Uchino’s claim that her husband, Kenichi, a third-generation Toyota employee, was a victim of karoshi when he died in 2002 at the age of 30. He collapsed at 4am at work, having put in more than 80 hours of overtime each month for six months before his death. ?The moment when I am happiest is when I can sleep,? Mr Uchino told his wife the week of his death. He left two children, aged one and three.

As a manager of quality control, Mr Uchino was constantly training workers, attending meetings and writing reports when not on the production line. Toyota treated almost all that time as voluntary and unpaid. So did the Toyota Labour Standards Inspection Office, part of the labour ministry. But the court ruled that the long hours were an integral part of his job. On December 14th the government decided not to appeal against the verdict.

The ruling is important because it may increase the pressure on companies to treat ?free overtime? (work that an employee is obliged to perform but not paid for) as paid work. That would send shockwaves through corporate Japan, where long, long hours are the norm.

Official figures say that the Japanese work about 1,780 hours a year, slightly less than Americans (1,800 hours a year), though more than Germans (1,440). But the statistics are misleading because they do not count ?free overtime?. Other tallies show that one in three men aged 30 to 40 works over 60 hours a week. Half say they get no overtime. Factory workers arrive early and stay late, without pay. Training at weekends may be uncompensated.

During the past 20 years of economic doldrums, many companies have replaced full-time workers with part-time ones. Regular staff who remain benefit from lifetime employment but feel obliged to work extra hours lest their positions be made temporary. Cultural factors reinforce these trends. Hard work is respected as the cornerstone of Japan’s post-war economic miracle. The value of self-sacrifice puts the benefit of the group above that of the individual.

Toyota, which is challenging GM as the world’s largest carmaker, is often praised for the efficiency and flexibility of its workforce. Ms Uchino has a different view. ?It is because so many people work free overtime that Toyota reaps profits,? she says. ?I hope some of those profits can be brought back to help the employees and their families. That would make Toyota a true global leader.? The company is promising to prevent karoshi in future.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10329261