Year-end bonuses make sharpest drop ever

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The average year-end bonus at major Japanese companies this year plunged by 15.01 percent to 755,628 yen, the sharpest year-on-year drop since the records began in 1959, the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) has announced.

It is also the first double digit decline for winter bonuses, with the figure standing at the lowest level since 1990, when the average amount was 748,872 yen.

The average payment in the manufacturing industry dropped by 18.46 percent to 728,589 yen, while it declined by 4.77 percent to 834,020 yen for non-manufacturing companies, with both recording their worst slide ever.

Above all, export-oriented businesses were hit hard by the global recession, with the decline standing at 22.81 percent for automakers, 22.14 percent for non-ferrous metal manufacturers, and 21.29 percent for the textile industry. The only exception was the food industry, which marked a slight increase of 0.51 percent.

The survey was conducted on 253 companies with 500 or more employees listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The data was collected from 164 corporations that provided the amount of winter bonuses settled after labor-management negotiations.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20091219p2a00m0na006000c.html

Bans eyed to help dispatch workers

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To help those most vulnerable in economic downturns, the labor ministry decided to ban, in principle, “registration-type” dispatches, in which staffing agencies conclude contracts with workers only for their dispatch periods, sources said.

The ministry also decided Tuesday to prohibit the staffing agencies from sending blue-collar workers to manufacturing industries for short-term work, they said.

The measures will be incorporated in revisions to the workers dispatch law, which are scheduled to be submitted to the ordinary Diet session starting next month.

The ministry plans to put the new measures into effect within three years after promulgation to ensure enough time to prepare for the drastic change.

During the global financial crisis, those on registration-type dispatches were among the first to lose their jobs, and often their homes, once their contract periods expired. Many of these workers had been sent to manufacturing industries.

The ministry’s plan is to help these workers get longer-term contracts and more stable employment.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200912170129.html

Japan’s Unionization Rate Rises for First Time Since 1975

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Japan’s overall unionization rate picked up for the first time since 1975, as the membership among regular employees has sharply increased, it was announced by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. The estimated unionization rate (percentage of union members among all employees) for 2009 was 18.5 percent, up 0.4 points from the preceding year., according to the government’s survey conducted in June. Increased membership among non-permanent workers on top of shrinking labor population is considered to have contributed to the rise in percentage.

The union membership ratio in Japan stopped falling for the first time in 27 years in 2007, mainly because of the mounting expectation for demand for union help, as the unemployment rate remained high. The survey showed that the number of union members grew to 10,078 million, while the number of unions decreased by 269 to 26,696.

Among industries, accommodation and food services saw their unionization rate increase significantly by 11.2 percent, compared to the previous year, followed by a 6.9 percent rise for wholesale and retail industries and 4 percent for transport and postal services. While the rate deceased, both for construction work businesses and civil workers by 3.1 percent.

http://www.laboreducator.org/wol091212.htm

1st rise in unionization in 34 years

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The percentage of unionized workers rose for the first time since 1975–in part because of a drop in employee numbers amid the economic downturn, a labor ministry survey showed.

Another reason cited was part-time workers joining labor unions at supermarket stores, restaurant chains and other businesses.

The unionization rate rose 0.4 percentage point from a year earlier to 18.5 percent as of the end of June. It had steadily declined from the peak of 34.4 percent in 1975.

The number of company employees fell 1.1 million from a year earlier to 54.55 million.

The number of unionized part-time workers topped 700,000, accounting for a record 7 percent of all unionized workers.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200912120155.html

Bar Association says martinis and legal advice a bad mix

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A martini with two olives and a dash of legal advice? That’s the plan of a Tokyo lawyer who wants to open a bar where he would serve up both drinks and counsel, but the Daini Tokyo Bar Association is calling it a bad mix.

According to 29-year-old attorney Jun Sotooka, the idea first came from his friend, a 33-year-old systems developer, and the pair set up a parent corporation in August.

Under the plan, the company would team up with a restaurateur and open a location in Tokyo close to a major train station. Lawyers would work as bartenders, and would take the customers into a separate room to talk if they sought legal advice. The advice would be pro bono, while in order to attract a solid customer base, Sotooka had hoped to bring about 10 people into the business, including women.

“If you look for a lawyer after something happens, it’s too late,” says Sotooka. “You feel relieved if you can talk to someone you have a real affinity for, so the bar is a good place to meet for both the lawyer and the client.”

However, the Daini Tokyo Bar Association — of which Sotooka is a member — has demanded the plan be put on hold, saying that it amounts to legal referrals for profit — a violation of the Lawyers Act.

“Having drunk clients getting legal counsel spells trouble,” says Yoshiyuki Ajioka, the bar association’s vice president. “It is also an offense to dignity.”

A determined Sotooka responds: “The provisions of the act have malicious brokers in mind, and there is no conflict (with those provisions) in this plan. If that’s not recognized, then we will openly let society decide.”

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20091209p2a00m0na001000c.html

Taxpayer ID number system a step closer

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The government’s Tax Commission decided Sunday to launch in the new year a working group to study the introduction of a system to identify taxpayers by assigning them an ID number, according to government officials. The envisaged system would enable the government to collect all tax-related information about individual taxpayers, including the amount of their income, thereby boosting the efficiency of the government’s operation of the social security and other systems.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20091207TDY01305.htm

Ministries joust over whether to up medical fees

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The issue is one of the focal points in the compilation of the fiscal 2010 budget. If the government decides to raise the amount of medical remuneration in fiscal 2010, it will be the first such increase since fiscal 2000.

“To restore the nation’s ailing health care system, we need to consider increasing government expenses for health care. We can’t reduce the medical remuneration [paid to doctors and medical facilities],” Shinya Adachi, parliamentary secretary of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, said at a press conference last week.

Medical treatment fees are the payments doctors or recognized medical facilities receive from the national health insurance system for rendering medical services to insured patients. A certain number of points are allocated to each category of medical service, with each point worth 10 yen. Every two years, the Cabinet decides whether the fees should increase or decrease, and then the Central Social Insurance Medical Council, an advisory body of the health, labor and welfare minister, decides how many points to credit for each medical service.

If medical remuneration is reduced by 1 percent, the government could cut health care expenses–which totaled about 34 trillion yen paid by the government in fiscal 2008–by 340 billion yen. Such a cut also would reduce the amount of money citizens must pay after receiving services at medical institutions.

Considering the Finance Ministry’s stance, Nagatsuma implied the possibility of a slight increase in the medical service fee, or of increasing the government subsidy to the health insurance system along with raising the medical remuneration by a large margin. “We need to consider a way [to raise medical remuneration] that won’t increase the expenses paid by the citizens at medical institutions or hike the health insurance premium,” Nagatsuma said.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20091207TDY03104.htm

Senior immigration officer arrested on suspicion of corruption

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A senior immigration officer arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes is believed to have told his briber to set up an office in Kawasaki as a front.

Arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes in return for favors in the screening of residence permits for female bar workers was Masashi Ogura, 54, a chief screening officer at the Narita Airport District Immigration Office. Also arrested on suspicion of bribery was Shingo Ito, 46, the president of a Shibuya company that accommodates overseas entertainers.

Ogura is accused of accepting a total of about 6 million yen from Ito between July 2007 and November this year, while he served in positions at the Yokohama and Narita Airport district immigration offices. Both parties have reportedly admitted to the allegations against them.

Police said that Ito’s company had mainly Filipino women come to Japan as dancers and singers and work at a pub that he operated in the Tokyo city of Fuchu. He also introduced them to other restaurants, investigators said. Ogura reportedly used immigration computer terminals to look up the criminal history and immigration logs of the foreign women that Ito was planning to bring to Japan, and leaked the information.

“He (Ogura) silently accepted the fact that there were false details on application forms,” Ito was reported as telling investigators.

On Friday police searched about 20 locations in connection with their investigation into the alleged bribery, including the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau.

Investigators suspect that Ogura had Ito set up an office under the jurisdiction of the Yokohama District Immigration Office. They said Ito had earlier heard from a man involved in the same type of business that screening at the Yokohama immigration office was lenient, and approached Ogura, treating him to meals and a round of golf.

Ito’s company did not have any business facilities under the jurisdiction of the Yokohama immigration office. To obtain residence permits at the office, the company applying must have a business facility under the office’s jurisdiction with at least five permanent employees. Ogura reportedly told Ito to get his “appearances in order” and set up an office in Kawasaki. The office had just one desk and no permanent manager.

It’s believed that tightened immigration procedures played a part in the pair’s actions. In the past, there were many cases in which women entered Japan on entertainment visas but ended up working as bar hostesses, which promoted immigration authorities to tighten screening of the places where they were working in 2005. According to the Justice Ministry, some 135,000 people entered Japan in 2004 as entertainers, but in 2005 the figure dropped to about 100,000 and in 2008 the number sunk to about 35,000.

Masahiro Tauchi, director-general of the Justice Ministry’s Immigration Bureau, expressed regret over Ogura’s arrest.

“It is extremely disappointing that a worker has been arrested. We will thoroughly carry out an internal investigation and deal with the matter strictly,” he said.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20091205p2a00m0na010000c.html

Japan’s ‘modern geisha’ to form labour union

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Japan’s bar hostesses, often dubbed “modern geisha”, plan to form their first trade union next month to fight for better wages and conditions, a labour official said on Wednesday.

Many “kyabakura-jo”, or cabaret club sisters, complain of unpaid wages and sexual harassment by their customers and employers, said Takeshi Suzuki, a senior official of a Tokyo-based union for part-time workers.

“We are seeing an increasing number of complaints filed by hostesses as the economy gets worse,” said Suzuki, whose organisation plans to open a separate chapter for the bar hostesses in January.

“Some said they get paid nothing after their managers charge them for the expenses of flowers, hair-dos and make-up.”

Kyabakura, similarly to the geisha of old, provide company to male clients, serving and entertaining them. They are often portrayed in TV dramas as enjoying a glamorous and well-paid lifestyle.

Despite the image, their working conditions remain lawless, said Suzuki.

“We have received complaints over baseless fines, charges and excessive quotas to get drink orders (from male clients),” he said.

“Some of them said they have been told to provide an extra service called ‘accompanying’ male customers, such as going on a date or to a hotel.

“Many hostesses, in their teens and early 20s, have been forced to believe they can’t do anything about their atrocious working conditions and demands from employers. But they can fight against them.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jzF8wQfCQ6qZHczOZNWuYemy0lhA?index=0

A level playing field for immigrants

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Despite Japan’s looming demographic disaster — you know, the aging society and population drop due to low birthrates and record-long life spans — we still have no immigration policy. No wonder: The people charged with dealing with non-Japanese (NJ) — i.e. the Ministry of Justice’s Immigration Bureau and sundry business-sector organizations — just police NJ while leeching off their labor. Essentially, their goal is to protect Japan from the outside world: keep refugees out, relegate migrant workers to revolving-door contracted labor conditions, and leash NJ to one- to three-year visas. For NJ who do want to settle, the Justice Ministry’s petty and arbitrary rules can make permanent residency (PR) and naturalization procedures borderline masochistic.

This cannot continue, because Japan is at a competitive disadvantage in the global labor market. Any immigrant with ambitions to progress beyond Japan’s glass ceiling (that of either factory cog or perpetual corporate flunky) is going to stay away. Why bother learning Japanese when there are other societies that use, say, English, that moreover offer better lifetime opportunities? It’s time we lost our facile arrogance, and stopped assuming that the offer of a subordinate and tenuous life in a peaceful, rich and orderly society is attractive enough to make bright people stay. We also have to be welcoming and help migrants to settle.

As in any society, police are here to maintain law and order. The problem is that our National Police Agency (NPA) has an explicit policy mandate to see internationalization itself as a threat to public order. As discussed here previously, NPA policy rhetoric talks about protecting “citizens” (kokumin) from crimes caused by outsiders (even though statistics show that insiders, both in terms of numbers and percentages, commit a disproportionate amount of crime). This perpetual public “othering and criminalizing” of the alien must stop, because police trained to see Japan as a fortress to defend will only further alienate NJ.

In other words, the 2000s saw the public image of NJ shift from “misunderstood outsider” to “social destabilizer”; government surveys even showed that an increasing majority of Japanese think NJ deserve fewer human rights!

Let’s change course. If Hatoyama is as serious as he says he is about putting legislation back in the hands of elected officials, it’s high time to countermand the elite bureaucratic xenophobes that pass for policymakers in Japan. Grant some concessions to noncitizens to make immigration to Japan more attractive.

Otherwise, potential immigrants will just go someplace else. Japan, which will soon drop to third place in the ranking of world economies, will be all the poorer for it.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091201ad.html