Concerns are growing over the future of a public program to dispatch foreign teachers to Japanese public schools as a key administrative reform panel has urged the government-linked body that runs the program to drastically cut its overall budget.
But government officials in charge of the operating body told The Japan Times recently the recommendation is unlikely to lead to direct budget cuts for the 23-year-old Japan Exchange and Teaching program, in which the central and local governments dispatch assistant language teachers to public high schools nationwide with public money.
“We don’t regard the results of ‘jigyo shiwake’ (budget screening) as a clear and immediate request to cut the budget of the JET program,” said Takashi Endo of the international division of the internal affairs ministry’s Local Administration Bureau.
Jigyo shiwake is the Democratic Party of Japan-led administration’s project to cut down on wasteful spending by the government and government-backed special organizations.
Municipalities will determine the number of teachers to be dispatched under the JET program, Endo added.
In a summary by a working group of the budget-cutting panel in May, one member recommended the JET program, run by the government-backed Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR), be fundamentally reformed.
Other group members’ comments ranged from one calling for the program to be reassessed, along with how its costs should be covered, and by what source, to one member saying the JET program is unnecessary and another calling its significance unclear.
The panel may not have final say, but its comments are expected to strongly influence the final decision by top officials of the internal affairs ministry on funding requests for the next fiscal year.
CLAIR’s ¥3.6 billion budget to promote international exchange programs is shared by the 47 prefectures and 19 major cities, including ¥858 million for the JET program, in the current fiscal year.
The jigyo shiwake mainly targets wasteful spending by the central government. But the panel leveled criticism at CLAIR and the JET program, noting local governments receive vast grants and many former senior central government officials have landed lucrative positions at CLAIR after retirement in the practice known as “amakudari.”
However critical, the panel didn’t recommend a specific funding cut for the JET program.
Instead, the panel’s focus appeared to be on non-JET-related operations of CLAIR, including its seven overseas offices and wages paid to amakudari ex-bureaucrats.
In their summary, many panel members said CLAIR’s seven overseas offices are unneeded and should be closed.
An official of the Cabinet Revitalization Unit, which runs the jigyo shiwake budget-cutting project, said it will leave funding for the JET program and CLAIR in the hands of the internal affairs ministry.
For this fiscal year, there are 4,436 JET program participants, of whom 2,537 are Americans, 481 are Canadians and 390 are British. Of the total, 4,063 are assistant language teachers (ALTs). Participants peaked at 6,273 in 2002 and have since been decreasing.
CLAIR will start asking municipalities in November how many ALTs they will need for the next fiscal year, and submit a budget draft to the internal affairs ministry in February as per its usual practice, CLAIR spokesman Sadami Mie said.
The ministry will also query municipalities about their ALT needs but won’t be involved in coming up with the CLAIR budget until the group submits its draft in February, Endo of the ministry said.
While acknowledging that CLAIR’s operations, including its foreign offices, need to be reassessed, he stressed the importance of the JET program.
The CLAIR foreign offices engage in activities to promote the internationalization of municipalities, not recruiting JET teachers from the U.S. and Britain. Japanese embassies do that job.
“We should review what needs to be reviewed (about CLAIR). But we want to keep the JET program,” he said.
Lower House member Manabu Terada, who headed the budget-cutting working group scrutinizing the CLAIR budget, told The Japan Times that the ministry is not fit to oversee the JET program, hinting the Foreign Ministry may be more suitable because the program helps nurture foreigners’ understanding of Japan and promotes international exchanges.
When it was established 23 years ago, JET’s mission was the promotion of municipalities’ international exchanges, and the internal affairs ministry became the supervising body because it oversees municipalities.
But Terada said some municipalities don’t need the program because they can hire ALTs from staffing companies.
“The way CLAIR is operated needs to be overhauled,” Terada said, adding he doesn’t think the JET program is unnecessary.
For another ministry to start up a program similar to JET, the process would be time-consuming and entail lengthy cross-ministry discussions, he said.
Kanagawa Prefecture arranges for agencies to deploy assistant language teachers instead of relying solely on the JET program, which would require it to pay a net ¥3.6 million annual salary to an ALT.
A JET assistant language teacher works full time at a public high school, allowing interaction with kids in school events outside of class hours.
Local governments can save money by tapping ALT-staffing agencies, having ALTs work shorter hours and paying them by the hour. But deep cultural and human exchanges can’t be expected via such arrangements, experts say.
“We wouldn’t say the JET program is unnecessary, but we need to consider costs as well,” Kanagawa prefectural official Mayumi Kawaguchi said. “We want CLAIR to be more efficient.”
Kanagawa, which has 143 public high schools, now hires 10 ALTs via JET, down from the peak of 46 from 2002 to 2004, prefectural official Kyoko Sakurada said. The prefecture began hiring ALTs through an agency in 2006.
Strict immigration rules may threaten Japan’s future
Her new country needs her, her new employer adores her, and Joyce Anne Paulino, who landed here 14 months ago knowing not a word of the language, can now say in Japanese that she’d like very much to stay. But Paulino, 31, a nurse from the Philippines, worries about the odds. To stay in Japan long-term, she must pass a test that almost no foreigner passes.
For Japan, maintaining economic relevance in the next decades hinges on its ability — and its willingness — to grow by seeking outside help. Japan has long had deep misgivings about immigration and has tightly controlled the ability of foreigners to live and work here.
But with the country’s population expected to fall from 127 million to below 100 million by 2055, Prime Minister Naoto Kan last month took a step toward loosening Japan’s grip on immigration, outlining a goal to double the number of highly skilled foreign workers within a decade.
In Japan, just 1.7 percent of the population (or roughly 2.2 million people) is foreign or foreign-born. Foreigners represent small slices of almost every sector of the economy, but they also represent the one slice of the population with a chance to grow. Japan is on pace to have three workers for every two retirees by 2060.
But the economic partnership program that brought Paulino and hundreds of other nurses and caretakers to Japan has a flaw. Indonesian and Filipino workers who come to care for a vast and growing elderly population cannot stay for good without passing a certification test. And that test’s reliance on high-level Japanese — whose characters these nurses cram to memorize — has turned the test into a de facto language exam.
Ninety percent of Japanese nurses pass the test. This year, three of 254 immigrants passed it. The year before, none of 82 passed.
For immigrant advocates, a pass-or-go-home test with a success rate of less than 1 percent creates a wide target for criticism — especially at a time when Japan’s demographics are increasing the need for skilled foreign labor.
For many officials in the government and the medical industry, however, difficulties with the program point to a larger dilemma confronting a country whose complex language and resistance to foreigners make it particularly tough to penetrate.
Kan’s goal to double the number of skilled foreign workers seems reasonable enough, given that Japan currently has 278,000 college-educated foreign workers — the United States has more than 8 million, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — but it meets some resistance.
An Asahi Shimbun newspaper poll in June asked Japanese about accepting immigrants to “maintain economic vitality.” Twenty-six percent favored the idea. Sixty-five percent opposed it. And the likelihood of substantive changes in immigration policy took a major hit, experts said, when Kan’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan saw setbacks in parliamentary elections this month.
Political analysts now paint a grim picture of a country at legislative impasse. Foreigners such as Paulino find it difficult to get here, difficult to thrive and difficult to stay, and at least for now, Kan’s government will have a difficult time changing any of that.
‘A lack of urgency’
“There’s a lack of urgency or lack of sense of crisis for the declining population in Japan,” said Satoru Tominaga, director of Garuda, an advocacy group for Indonesian nurse and caretaker candidates. “We need radical policy change to build up the number” of such workers. “However, Japan lacks a strong government; if anything, it’s in chaos.”
When Japan struck economic partnership agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines, attracting nurses and caretakers wasn’t the primary objective. Japan sought duty-free access for its automakers to the Southeast Asian market. Accepting skilled labor was just part of the deal.
But by 2025, Japan will need to almost double its number of nurses and care workers, currently at 1.2 million. And because of the test, substandard language skills, not substandard caretaking skills, are keeping the obvious solution from meeting the gaping need.
The 998 Filipino and Indonesian nurses and caretakers who’ve come to Japan since 2008 all have, at minimum, college educations or several years of professional experience. Nurses can stay for three years, with three chances to pass the test. Other caregivers can stay for four years, with one chance to pass. Those who arrive in Japan take a six-month language cram class and then begin work as trainees.
They are allotted a brief period every workday — 45 minutes, in Paulino’s case — for language study. Many also study for hours at night.
“The language skills, that is a huge hurdle for them,” said Kiichi Inagaki, an official at the Japan International Corporation for Welfare Services, which oversees the program. “However, if you go around the hospital, you understand how language is important. Nurses are dealing with medical technicalities. They are talking to doctors about what is important. In order to secure a safe medical system, they need a very high standard of Japanese.”
Advocates for foreign nurses and caregivers do not play down the importance of speaking and understanding Japanese. But they emphasize that the Japanese characters for medical terminology are among the hardest to learn; perhaps some jargon-heavy portion of the certification test, they say, could be given in English or workers’ native language.
A new culture
When Paulino boarded a flight from Manila to Tokyo in May 2009, she had a sense of trepidation and adventure — not that she could express it in Japanese. She saw her mission as a way to make better money and “explore herself,” she said. Her first chance for exploration came onboard, when a meal of rice, which she doesn’t like, came with chopsticks, which she didn’t know how to use.
“All the way to Japan, we were joking about that,” said Fritzie Perez, a fellow Filipino nurse who sat in the same row. “We were saying, ‘Joyce, how are you going to eat?’ ”
Now eight months into her stint at the Tamagawa Subaru nursing home, Paulino feels comfortable speaking and joking with the elderly people she cares for.
“She did have problems initially, especially in the Japanese language, but there’s been so much improvement,” said Keisuke Isozaki, head of caretaking at the home. “She’s not capable of writing things down for the record, but otherwise she’s as capable as any Japanese staffer.”
Paulino said she is nervous about her test, scheduled for January 2013. This month, 33 nurses and caretakers returned to their home countries, discouraged with their chances.
Her friend, Perez, described the language study and the caretaking as “serving two masters at the same time.”
“When I get home, that’s when I study,” Paulino said. “But every time I read my book, I start to fall asleep. It’s bothering me. Because [the test] is only one chance. And I don’t know if I can get it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/27/AR2010072706053.html
Hike in minimum wages
Hourly minimum wages are set to create a society in which all people can earn a living if they work diligently. The Central Minimum Wages Council of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has decided on an average raise of 15 yen in minimum hourly wages set by prefectures.
In its manifesto for the Lower House election last year, the Democratic Party of Japan proposed a national minimum wage of 800 yen ($9.24) an hour.
The council’s discussions ran late because of a deep rift between labor and management. Labor representatives sought an early implementation of the 800-yen target while corporate representatives were concerned that added labor costs could affect the economy and worsen the performances of small and midsized companies.
Nevertheless, they agreed upon the largest raise because the significance of minimum wages has changed drastically.
The minimum wage is on par with the starting wages of young new employees living with their parents. The seniority-based pay scales were designed so that young regular employees would earn enough to support a family when they are in their 30s.
However, due to the economic downturn since the 1990s, the number of nonregular workers with few prospects of a pay raise has increased to about one-third of workers. Within this structure, low minimum wages can easily put people in “working poor” situations.
The current nationwide average minimum wage stands at 713 yen per hour. Even those who work full-time hours can earn only 1.5 million yen a year. Among workers with annual incomes of less than 2 million yen, nearly one in every five is a household head.
In 12 prefectures, minimum wages are lower than public welfare assistance. This topsy-turvy situation could deprive the people of the will to work.
European nations have been continuously increasing minimum wages, based on the principle that companies are responsible for guaranteeing their employees wages sufficient to maintain their livelihoods. Companies that can no longer do this must leave to make room for new businesses.
The U.S. minimum wage was one of the lowest among leading economies. In response to criticism about growing income gaps and poverty, the federal minimum wage was raised by 40 percent to $7.25 an hour during the three years through 2009.
To show the council’s will to raise the bottom level of minimum wages, its guidelines call for a considerable hike of 10 yen in areas, such as Aomori and Okinawa prefectures, where minimum wages are lower.
Even if the minimum wages are raised to 800 yen an hour, the annual income for those who work full-time hours would fall short of 2 million yen. With that level of income, workers would not be able to cover the costs of living in Japan, where they must pay for housing and child education.
The raising of minimum wages will not function effectively without the creation of a comprehensive “anti-poverty” framework. We must keep firmly in mind that the “raise is a beginning.”
The only Filipino nurse to pass Japan’s nursing exam
Ever Lalin, like others in the first batch of 98 nurses and caregivers who went to Japan May last year for a training stint preparatory to taking the Japanese nursing licensure exam, had no prior lessons in the Niponggo language.
“Halimaw ah (A monster’s feat),” cheered nurse bloggers when it was announced last March that Ever, 34, was the only Filipino to pass the difficult licensure exam and the only foreign applicant to get it on the first try. Two Indonesians who had arrived a year earlier also passed. The exam included a proficiency test in “kanji,” Chinese characters that are a mindset away from those schooled in the Roman alphabet.
Director Nimpha De Guzman of the Welfare and Employment Office of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) noted that tests had showed Ever had a high aptitude for languages.
The nurse from Abra, noted De Guzman, had spent four years working in a hospital in Saudi Arabia and came home speaking fluent Arabic.
Interviewed via email for a presentation prepared by POEA-TV for the recent Migrant Workers Day celebration, Ever was quoted as saying it must have been her high motivation and dogged determination—for her professional satisfaction as well as the financial advancement of her family.
“I studied so hard…every minute counted,” she had told De Guzman. She took advanced Japanese review classes.
There was another thing going for Ever that other equally motivated Filipino nurses may not have had. The hospital she was assigned to—Ashikaga Red Cross Hospital—had a special intervention program for foreign trainees like Ever. A Japanese staff member was assigned to be her mentor, De Guzman shared.
Right after she got her Japanese nursing license, the Ashikaga hospital handed Ever an upgraded appointment to the emergency room, reportedly a section of her choice.
While learning Japanese may be difficult for a nation so long concerned with learning English, said officials, it’s not impossible. Inspired by Ever’s example, a new batch of trainees under the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement has been dispatched.
ＡＬＴ「難」山積み 自治体財政、人材確保、労働環境
教育委員会が「偽装請負」で指導を受ける。そんな事態が後を絶たない。それでも多くの教委が外国語指導助手（ＡＬＴ）の業務委託（請負）を続ける背景には、自治体の厳しい財政事情や人材確保の難しさがある。一方で外国人の相談を受ける労働組合には、ＡＬＴが続々と駆け込む。偽装請負トラブルの火種を抱えたまま、多くの教委が来春、小学校の英語必修化を迎えることになる。
Average minimum hourly wage to rise 15 yen to 728 yen in Japan
A government advisory panel is expected to recommend Friday that a weighted-average hourly minimum wage in Japan be raised by 15 yen to 728 yen for fiscal 2010 that started in April, government sources said Thursday.
The increase would exceed 10 yen for fiscal 2009 and be the fourth consecutive double-digit increase. The government’s growth strategy, adopted in June, calls for raising the minimum hourly wage in each of the 47 Japanese prefectures to at least 800 yen as early as possible.
The recommendation by the Central Minimum Wages Council seeks to raise the minimum hourly wage by some 10 yen in 41 prefectures and by 13 to 30 yen in the other six prefectures where minimum wage income slips far below welfare benefits, the sources said.
The recommended increase stands at 30 yen in Tokyo and Kanagawa, at 15 yen in Kyoto, at 14 yen in Osaka and Saitama, and at 13 yen in Hokkaido.
If the recommendation is accepted, welfare benefits’ excess over minimum wage income will be eliminated in Aomori, Akita, Saitama and Chiba prefectures. Such excess will still exist in Hokkaido and Tokyo, and Miyagi, Kanagawa, Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo and Hiroshima prefectures.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100805p2g00m0dm077000c.html
Japan’s trainee programme ‘human trafficking’: lawyer
A Japanese human rights lawyer Thursday labelled a government-backed foreign trainee programme as a “form of human trafficking”, saying dozens had died from apparent overwork.
Japan has invited tens of thousands of foreigners for industrial training programmes as low-wage apprentices, mostly from China, Indonesia and the Philippines, since the 1990s, officially so they can learn new skills.
“There is a huge difference between the purpose of this system and the reality,” said Lila Abiko of the Lawyers’ Network for Trainees in Japan.
“The purpose they say is the international contribution through transferring technologies through the person from a developing country. But actually this system functions to receive cheap unskilled labourers and exploit them.”
The Japanese government, which allows little immigration of unskilled workers, started the trainees’ programme in 1993, after the world’s second-largest economy dived into a serious downturn.
Amid rising concern over abuses, the lawyer said that a record 35 workers from Asia had died in Japan in the year to March 2009 alone.
The Japan International Training Cooperation Organization (JITCO), which oversees the programmes, had said last year that of these 16 had died of heart and brain ailments, five in workplace accidents and one had committed suicide.
A JITCO spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
The following year, 27 deaths were reported, including nine from heart and brain ailments and three suicides, Abiko said.
This month a Japanese labour office for the first time recognised that a Chinese intern employed under the programme had become the victim of what in Japan is called “karoshi” or “death through overwork.”
Jiang Xiao Dong, 31, from Jiangsu province died after a heart attack in June 2008 after working more than 100 hours overtime the month before at a metal processing firm northeast of Tokyo.
Abiko, who represents Jiang’s family, said one of his time cards showed he had worked 350 hours in November 2007 alone.
She said many of the interns had paid high deposits in their home countries, often equivalent to several years’ income, to unauthorised local brokers who helped them register for the programme and travel to Japan.
“I think this is one form of human trafficking, especially when they are seized by the throat because of the deposit,” she said.
One Chinese trainee, Li Quing Zhi, 34, said he came in 2007 to learn Japanese cooking but instead did manual work at a manufacturing workshop at minimum wage, working 150 hours of unpaid overtime a month.
After repeated complaints he was fired in March, leaving him stranded.
“I cannot go back to China without getting the payment that I deserve,” said the man, who said his wife and two children are waiting for him.
Jorge Bustamante, UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, issued a warning in April about the trainee programmes.
The Justice Ministry was not available for comment when contacted late Thursday by AFP.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gXN3sBZiNLSKHP3WYJ_8Qj2PROjA
英語助手と先生、授業協力したら違法 契約巡り現場混乱
英語の授業中、外国語指導助手（ＡＬＴ）と日本人教員が言葉を交わさない――。ＡＬＴを業者への業務委託（請負）で確保する自治体で、奇妙な授業風景が繰り広げられている。２人が協力して授業に取り組むと「偽装請負」（労働者派遣法違反）となってしまうからだ。ルールを守れずに労働局から指導を受ける教育委員会が相次ぎ、教室で混乱が起きている。
Wages Rise for Fourth Month on Overtime as Japanese Employers Limit Hiring
Japan’s wages rose for a fourth month as employers had staff work more hours instead of adding to payrolls, a trend that may sustain the recovery without reducing the economy’s reliance on exports to propel growth.
Monthly wages including overtime and bonuses increased 1.5 percent in June from a year earlier to 437,677 yen ($5,050), the Labor Ministry said today in Tokyo.
A gradual rebound in salaries will help support consumer spending in coming months, according to economist Yoshimasa Maruyama. That will reduce the damage from a lack of job gains after figures last week showed the unemployment rate rose to a seven-month high, driven by a lack of positions for young people.
“Recent increases in overtime pay reflect the economic recovery,” Maruyama, a senior economist at Itochu Corp. in Tokyo, said before today’s report. “But companies are holding off on meaningfully increasing personnel costs” until the economic outlook becomes clearer, he said.
Special pay, a category that includes bonuses, gained 3.3 percent to 173,851 yen, today’s report showed. Mid-year bonuses at large companies rose for the first time in three years, according to business lobby Keidanren.
While overtime hours climbed for a sixth month on a year- on-year basis, the figure for manufacturers dropped from a month earlier, reflecting a recent stalling of production. Factory output slumped 1.5 percent in June, the biggest decline in more than a year, the Trade Ministry said last week.
Income Gap Wider As Irregular Workers Rise: Labor Ministry
Japan’s income gap is widening as companies are hiring more irregular workers, the Labor Ministry said Tuesday in its fiscal 2010 report on the country’s labor market.
The ministry noted that companies were prompted to hire more irregular workers in light of eased regulations on labor dispatch service.
The number of workers earning an annual salary of 1-2.5 million yen was in particular on the increase over the decade through 2007, according to the ministry’s latest White Paper on the Labour Economy.
In the 2000s, the ratio of irregular workers, including those dispatched from manpower agencies, grew at a faster clip, with the ratio now accounting for more than 30% of the country’s overall labor force.
This is mainly attributed to the fact that “Major firms, hoping to curtail personnel costs, expanded the hiring of irregular workers over those on a regular payroll,” the white paper says.
The ministry suggested in the paper that it is imperative for employers to turn irregular workers into permanent employees, so employers can provide higher wages and ensure stable job conditions.
Meanwhile, the number of those fresh from university and college having difficulty finding a job has also increased lately, with hiring appetite souring at firms.
“It is necessary for companies seeking sustainable management to make viable recruitment plans without being affected by short-term economic trends,” the ministry said in the paper.