Japan Press Weekly

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2013 April 10 - 16 TOP3 [LABOR]

Job ‘reform’ helps corporate giants kick workers out

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

Initiated by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo calling for a conversion from the “excessively-sustained” employment system to more flexible labor mobility, a “reform” in the current system is gaining momentum. It, however, will only help create more unstable jobs under the pretext of the conversion to higher labor mobility.

Large corporations conduct restructuring schemes in accordance with changes in economic climate. Meanwhile, the number of non-regular workers continues to increase, amounting to more than 30% of the total workforce in Japan. Thus, the Japanese labor market is already in flux, and designating the present state of employment as “excessively-sustained” is completely off the mark.

Subsidize corporations to use private outplacement firms

In the Industrial Competitiveness Council, affiliated with the Economic Revitalization Headquarters in which all Cabinet ministers take part, business leaders are proposing that the government take advantage of private outplacement firms and subsidize corporations using such services to facilitate their restructuring plan.

Receiving a commission from corporations, outplacement firms then supposedly “support” the workers targeted in corporate downsizing to find another job. Large companies such as Panasonic and NEC are making use of such firms in order to force the targeted workers to look for a job following forced early retirements after transferring them to so-called banishment rooms, an in-house isolation section created for the purpose of forcing them out of the company. At present, the corporations using such tactics pay outplacement firms around one million yen per worker. What business circles have in mind is to have the government provide them with subsidies so it will cost them less to carry out their layoff scheme.

Displaced workers are most often placed in a company with worse working conditions or on non-regular contracts. This is what the proposed measures for a more flexible labor market is really about.

Excessive working hours and workloads

Corporate leaders reported to the Industrial Competitiveness Council that large corporations are overloaded with “surplus” employees. Workers at large corporations, however, are forced to work excessively long hours due to a shortage of workers and are burdened with excessively intensive workloads in order to achieve “good results” in a short period of time.

Panasonic, which carried out massive dismissals, can press its workers to work overtime for up to 13 hours and 45 minutes a day or up to 100 hours a month under a labor-management agreement on overtime work called the “36 Employee-Employer Agreement”. Added to the regular work hours of eight hours and thirty minutes, one may be forced to work, in theory, for 22 hours and 15 minutes a day. Even the 100-hour monthly overtime limit is beyond the government-set danger line for death from overwork.

Many large corporations under their own version of the “36 Agreement” adopt similar practices. Before calling workers “surplus”, they should reduce the workers’ working hours.