Wave of retiring workers could force big changes

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All over Japan, companies are bracing for a demographic wave that will wash away many of their most experienced employees. The Japanese call it their “2007 problem.” Beginning next year, members of what Japan considers its baby boom generation will start hitting 60 and dropping out of the workforce. Some might postpone retirement, but they can’t work forever. Plunging birth rates mean there won’t be nearly enough young people to replace them.

Japan is just beginning to wrestle with a more controversial solution to the labor shortage: opening the floodgates to immigration.

Foreign workers account for just 1% of Japan’s labor force, vs. about 15% in the USA. Japan relaxes visa requirements for engineers and other specialized workers. But it is reluctant to let less-skilled workers into the country, limiting them to two- or three-year “training” contracts if it admits them at all.

“Sooner or later, we will need more people,” says Hidenori Sakanaka, retired head of the national immigration bureau office in Tokyo. “This is the time to create a new immigration policy.”

Sakanaka, the former immigration official, says Japanese bureaucrats are in denial. After retiring from his government job, he set up the Japan Immigration Policy Institute to advocate more liberal policies. He made what he admits is a utopian proposal: Admit 20 million foreigners in the next 50 years, up from less than 2 million now.

“Look at the speed of the decline in population. It’s unbelievable. Thirty million people will disappear,” he says. “There are two ways to go: Shrunken Japan ? and learning to live with it; and Big Japan ? we accept foreigners.”

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2006-05-02-japan-econ-usat_x.htm
http://www.ncpa.org/newdpd/dpdarticle.php?article_id=3292

Immigration reform, political protests mark world May Day

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About 300,000 people across Japan took part in various May Day events calling for better working conditions. 

In Tokyo, 44,000 people gathered in a park before marching through the city center, waving colorful banners to protest what they see as growing social inequalities between the rich and poor.

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/may/02/yehey/world/
20060502wor1.html

The Rising Sun slowly sets

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Unfortunately, Japan is notoriously closed to foreigners, mainly because opinion polls show that most Japanese associate foreigners with crime. As of 2003, there were only 1.9 million registered foreign residents in Japan, equivalent to only 1.5% of the population. The real number of foreigners is even lower, considering that 600,000 are ethnic Koreans mostly born and raised in Japan and who speak only Japanese, and that most of the 270,000 registered Brazilians and 54,000 Peruvians are ethnic Japanese from South America who have returned to Japan.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/HD27Dh01.html

Aso family’s ’slave’ link under scrutiny

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While Taro Aso’s public statements as foreign minister have done little to help ease tensions between Tokyo and the rest of Asia, a family connection to wartime forced labor has raised further questions over his ability to oversee good relations with Japan’s neighbors.

Speaking at the opening of the Kyushu National Museum in Fukuoka last October, he described Japan as “one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture, and one race, the like of which there is no other on earth.” 

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20060425zg.html

Bill warrants thorough debate

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Only two weeks after it was sent to the chamber’s floor and with little debate, the Lower House has passed a bill that will allow the fingerprinting and photographing of foreigners as they enter Japan. 

At present, the United States is the only country that photographs and fingerprints entrants, although a few European countries fingerprint foreigners when they apply for visas at overseas diplomatic missions. 

Japan used to fingerprint foreign residents for residency-registration purposes. But facing strong opposition, especially from the country’s Korean residents, the Justice Ministry abolished the system in 1999. Even when it was taking fingerprints of foreign residents, the ministry’s official position was that the fingerprint records held by the ministry would never be used in criminal investigations. The Criminal Procedure Law also states that the authorities may fingerprint a person without a warrant only when the person is being held in custody as a criminal suspect.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20060420a1.html

Japan to map out plan to enhance competitiveness

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[The Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy] will discuss changing the country’s immigration rules so that more skilled foreigners can come to Japan for work. An outline is slated for release in May.

Meanwhile, the panel also agreed to discuss measures to address problems that may arise from an increase in the number of foreign residents in Japan. Such measures are to be finalized by the end of this year.

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/business/news/20060420p2g00m0bu014000c.html

Unlike with the French, a lack of fight spells future gloom for Japan’s workers

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For about a decade the Japanese government has been loosening its labor laws. Companies that were forced to restructure in the 1990s demanded more flexibility in hiring, so the government expanded the number of job types that could be covered by temporary workers. The result has been a steady erosion of wages, since companies who hire temps deal with agencies rather than with unions or the workers themselves. They ask for lower wages and the temp agencies accommodate them.

On average, a full-time temp worker takes home about one-third the pay of a full-time company employee. But full time employees may lose even that advantage if the government and business community have their way.

Last June, the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) proposed that regulations standardizing the 8-hour workday be eased.

In practice, what this means is that Japanese companies will no longer be compelled by law to pay office workers overtime if they put in more than eight hours; which in turn means that companies will be able to compel workers to stay at the office longer without adding to their labor costs. In the only country in the world that has a word for “death from overwork” (karoshi), such a development is chilling.

Next year, the government plans to submit a bill to the Diet for a Labor Contract Law, which will allow any company to set its own labor standards.

The bill will include the formation of a special commission that ostensibly protects workers’ rights, but such a law would in effect eliminate labor unions since it’s unlikely employers would allow collective bargaining clauses in their employment contracts.

At present, anyone who is fired for reasons they believe are unfair can take their employer to court. That option would probably become more difficult under the Labor Contract Law.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20060416pb.html

Gov’t promises to improve livelihood of foreign residents

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The panel will take up various problems facing foreign residents, including economic issues and language and other handicaps their children may face, [LDP Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo] Abe said. It will also try to ascertain how they have been accepted by local communities, he said. “Having admitted them into the country, Japan bears a certain degree of responsibility for their wellbeing,”  he said.

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/369814
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060413/kyodo/d8gv1msg0.html

Ministry plans electronic maps to track down suspicious foreigners

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In another controversial plan, the Justice Ministry will use electronic maps to locate foreigners believed to be staying here illegally, as well as businesses that have hired illegal workers, sources said.

Criticism had already been lodged against the plan, much like the Justice Ministry’s system set up in 2004 of having the public send e-mail information about foreigners who seem to be living in the country illegally. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has criticized the e-mail tip-off system for encouraging citizens to betray their neighbors. The federation said the system should end.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200604060246.html