The ruling coalition plans to oblige staffing agencies to disclose their commissions and call on client companies to take responsibility for covering temp workers’ compensation insurance, according to a draft plan aimed at reforming the labor dispatch system.
The plan by the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, revealed Wednesday, also seeks to address the practice of dispatching workers only to group companies.
The plan is set to be finalized at a meeting Tuesday of the ruling parties employment measures task force, which will ask the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yoichi Masuzoe to revise the Temporary Staffing Services Law, sources said.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is then expected to submit a bill to revise the law to an extraordinary Diet session, likely to be convened in the autumn.
The draft revision plan stipulates measures aimed at achieving three goals:
— Stabilizing employment and ensuring better working conditions for temp workers.
— Making labor dispatch businesses fairer.
— Tackling illegal dispatch practices.
Staffing agencies receive a payment from their client companies for dispatching workers and pay temp workers this amount minus expenses, social insurance fees and commission, among other costs. However, many of the agencies have not disclosed their cut.
This has drawn criticism, with some people suspecting the staffing agencies have exploited temp workers and are getting them to work for lower wages.
In light of this, the ruling parties have included in the draft plan a measure calling for the disclosure of information, including dispatch firms’ cuts, the sources said. By revealing how much commission the staffing agencies take, the ruling parties hope the margins will be adjusted to more appropriate levels, and dispatched workers can use the disclosed information when they select staffing agencies they want to register with.
Regarding the practice of outsourcing workers only to group companies, the draft plan calls for appropriate regulations, such as introducing a cap on the number of workers that staffing agencies are allowed to send to group companies.
The ruling parties say in the draft plan that such practices can adversely affect the treatment of workers.
The draft plan also calls for a measure that would force companies using temp workers to share legal responsibility for them with dispatch agencies, a move the lawmakers believe would help reduce the number of work-related accidents.
Under the current law, even though dispatched workers are involved in accidents at work, client companies are not required to share the costs of workers’ compensation insurance for temp workers.
Ban mulled for daily dispatch of temp workers
A ruling coalition task force agreed Wednesday that temp staff agencies should be banned from dispatching workers on a single-day basis, a practice criticized for spawning the “working poor” phenomenon and exacerbating social disparities, lawmakers said.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and junior coalition partner New Komeito plan to recommend ways of amending the worker dispatch law so that the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry can draft a bill to outlaw the practice and submit it to the Diet during the extra session expected to be convened around late August.
The task force also wants to oblige staffing agencies to charge public fees for temp worker dispatches to reduce their profit margin, they said.
The practice of daily-basis dispatches seems to involve mostly younger people who have registered at temp staff agencies and go to perform work at businesses when summoned by phone or e-mail.
Papers sent on Nova, ex-president over wages
The Osaka Labor Bureau sent papers to prosecutors Monday on failed English language school operator Nova Corp. and its former president, Nozomu Sahashi, on suspicion of violating the Labor Standards Law for failing to pay wages to Nova workers.
According to the bureau, Sahashi, 56, is suspected of failing to pay 105 million yen in wages to 400 Nova workers.
Among the 400, 134 were Japanese staffers who did not receive salaries for September, totaling 33 million yen, and 266 were foreign instructors who received no wages for October, totaling 72 million yen.
Sahashi has claimed his failing to pay wages is not a violation of the law. He was quoted by labor officials as saying, “I feel responsible as the [former] president of the company, but I did what I could do, like putting my own money into the business.”
Osaka Labor Bureau reports Nova Corp., ex-President Sahashi to prosecutors
Labor authorities have reported former Nova Corp. President Nozomu Sahashi and the English language school chain to public prosecutors for failing to pay their employees.
The Osaka Labor Bureau sent documents to the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office on Monday accusing Sahashi, 56, and Nova Corp. of breaking Labor Standards Law.
According to the labor bureau, Nova Corp. failed to pay about 105 million yen in wages to 400 foreign instructors and Japanese employees at the school.
The amount and the number of victims are a record high for a case of unpaid regular wages, excluding overtime-work wages and severance payment.
Sahashi has admitted to not having paid the wages, but denies that he did it deliberately.
“I was busy raising money using my personal funds,” he told police.
According to police, in 2007 Sahashi failed to pay about 33 million yen in wages to 134 Japanese employees on Sept. 27, and around 72 million yen to 266 foreign instructors on Oct. 15.
Sahashi has already been arrested for embezzlement in the conduct of business for allegedly misappropriating a massive sum from the employees’ welfare fund.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080701p2a00m0na019000c.html
Nova ex-president Sahashi says he was solely responsible for embezzlement
Disgraced former Nova Corp. President Nozomu Sahashi has admitted that he was solely responsible for misappropriating money from the coffers of an employees’ welfare fund, police sources said.
Sahashi, 56, who was arrested for embezzlement in the conduct of business after he was found to have misappropriated about 320 million yen pooled in a Nova employees’ mutual aid fund, had initially denied part of the allegations. However, he later told police, “I instructed everything,” admitting to the charges.
Osaka Prefectural Police also found that Sahashi was keeping track once a month of the remaining amount of money in the account of Shayukai — the mutual aid society of Nova employees — by having the amount reported to him. Police will further question Sahashi over the case, suspecting that he misused the money pooled in the Nova employees’ welfare fund for his own use.
In July last year, Sahashi allegedly transferred about 320 million yen from the Shayukai account into an account of Nova Kikaku, an affiliate of Nova. The money was later transferred to a Nova account. Investigators suspect that Sahashi attempted to launder money by transferring the funds.
In a related development, investigators suspect that Sahashi had also previously misappropriated money from the employees’ fund. In around 2005, he used about 10 million yen from the fund for the medical treatment of a Nova board member who was hospitalized at the time, as well as a total of several millions of yen for a year-end party and other expenses, police said.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080627p2a00m0na009000c.html
Exploiting laborers harms more than goodwill
“We are like rental products that are shipped to clients as needed.” These words, spoken by a 39-year-old man who barely gets by as a dispatch day laborer, appeared on The Asahi Shimbun’s lifestyle page. What business makes a man in his prime utter such a self-deprecating comment?
Goodwill Inc., a major temp agency, is set to be dissolved. The company received a summary indictment for dispatching temp workers to a client, knowing that it would then dispatch them to other firms, an illegal practice known as double dispatching.
It is also being sued by workers in a group lawsuit for questionable deductions of part of their pay. Apparently, the company’s “goodwill” stops at its name.
Day laborers who register with temp agencies as dispatch workers are sent to various work sites on a daily basis with a single cellphone message.
The method can be likened to a workforce small-lot sale, where double dispatching is the resale of that workforce. Agencies take advantage of the vulnerability of “jobless” workers and use them as a flexible workforce they can “hire and fire” at will. They also send people to dangerous work sites without informing them of the risks.
Some individuals may see this arrangement as a way to earn pocket money on days off. But given that workers are being treated as expendable resources, it is natural for others to call for a ban on the day labor dispatch system itself. There is no way an economy supported by exploitation of the weak can continue indefinitely.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200806270066.html
NOVA funds recorded as loan to president
Reserve funds for employees of failed language school chain Nova Corp. that had been transferred into an account for refunding student fees were recorded as a loan to its former president, Nozomu Sahashi, who is under arrest for misappropriating the funds, police said Wednesday.
The Osaka prefectural police believe Sahashi instructed a Nova accountant to falsify the purpose of the transfer as being “to cover refunds for students who cancelled their enrollment before finishing all programs” so he would not be blamed for the misuse of the funds.
The accountant recorded in a ledger for the reserve funds that the money was loaned to Sahashi from the mutual aid association.
However, there was no document to certify that the money was loaned by contract to Sahashi by the association.
At that time, Sahashi had personal assets, including bank accounts and property, worth several hundred millions of yen. The police believe he had no intention of repaying the money to the association.
[Nozomu] Sahashi and [Toshihiko] Murata [former deputy manager of Nova’s accounting department who was also arrested on a similar charge] were sent to the prosecutors office on Wednesday afternoon. The police will continue searching locations related to the suspects.
1 billion yen unaccounted for at Nova
About 1 billion yen is accounted for at Nova Corp., the failed operator of a large foreign language school chain, sources close to the firm said.
Osaka Prefectural Police are investigating how the money has been used.
Nova’s records show that approximately 700 million yen was withdrawn from one of the company’s accounts in early August last year, according to the sources. The document does not specify how the money was spent.
Roughly 1.4 billion yen was placed into the same account in September last year. However, some 1.7 billion yen was later withdrawn in the same month under the pretext of “Sahashi, temporary payment,” an apparent reference to payment made by then Nova President Nozomu Sahashi, say the sources.
The source of the 1.4 billion yen, or how the 1.7 billion yen was used, remains unknown.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080626p2a00m0na017000c.html
Goodwill to liquidate temp agency
Double-dispatch arrests trigger firm’s liquidation
Goodwill Group said Wednesday it will close its scandal-tainted temp staff unit Goodwill Inc. by the end of July because the health ministry is preparing to revoke its business license.
Goodwill Inc. said it will ask its clients to directly hire its temp staff assets or ask other temp staff firms to take them on by the end of next month.
Meanwhile, the company’s 4,200 or so full-time employees will be asked to quit, it said, adding that the group is unable to transfer them internally because of financial problems.
Goodwill Inc. President Kazuaki Nakamoto will resign when the firm is liquidated to take responsibility for the closure. The other board members will quit on Monday.
The announcement came a day after the Tokyo Summary Court ordered the staffing agency to pay ¥1 million in fines for dispatching temp workers to companies that sent them on to work at other firms ? a practice known as double-dispatch, which is banned by the Employment Security Law. Goodwill paid the fine Tuesday.
Double-dispatch is prohibited because it blurs the legal responsibilities for worker safety and other aspects of the working environment.
In the past several years, Japanese companies have been hiring more temporary workers to cut personnel costs. But this has led to an increase in the so-called working poor, especially among the younger generations.
“Workers at Goodwill are switching to other agencies and are dispatched in a similarly illegal manner,” Sekine said. “The problem will not end just by revoking Goodwill’s license.”
Police say ex-Nova boss hoarded riches on brink of bust
Disgraced former Nova Corp. President Nozomu Sahashi was in possession of a large amount of personal assets when the English conversation school was on the brink of collapse, police said.
Sahashi, 56, from Osaka, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of embezzlement in the conduct of business after he was found to have used about 320 million yen that had been pooled in Nova employees’ mutual aid society. Sahashi has reportedly denied part of the allegations.
Investigators found on Tuesday that Sahashi had had hundreds of millions of yen worth of personal assets in the forms of cash and real estate when he allegedly misappropriated the massive sum from the employees’ welfare fund by transferring the money into a Nova account in July last year.
In a related development, police also arrested Toshihiko Murata, 49, former president of a Nova affiliate called Nova Kikaku, on charges of embezzlement in the conduct of business.
Murata, who was reputed to be Sahashi’s right-hand man, has reportedly admitted to the allegations. He had assisted Sahashi mainly in accounting since around 1990.
Investigators have also raided a building in Osaka’s Chuo-ku, where Nova Kikaku’s headquarters was based.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080625p2a00m0na006000c.html