Japan Press Weekly

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2016 March 23 - 29 [POLITICS]

Opposition alliance proposes measures to increase childcare workers’ wages

The Japanese Communist Party together with the Democratic, Japan Innovation, People’s Life and Social Democratic parties on March 24 submitted a bill to the House of Representatives aimed to provide a monthly pay raise of 50,000 yen to childcare workers.

The bill seeks to establish a program to subsidize childcare facility operators in order to raise childcare workers’ wages by 50,000 yen per month on average. This program will benefit 461,000 care workers at privately run facilities, including authorized day nurseries, preschools, children’s homes and after-school care facilities.

The cost of operating the program will total 280 billion yen, which will be secured by reassessing wasteful public works projects and increasing corporate taxes.

At a press conference after the submission of the bill, JCP Lower House member Horiuchi Terufumi said, “The key to solving the issue of children on waiting lists for admission to authorized childcare centers is to increase the number of childcare workers. To achieve this, we presented this bill as the first needed step. We will continue working hard to improve childcare workers’ working conditions.”

In order to eliminate the waiting lists for children, the construction of more licensed facilities is an urgent need. However, the childcare service sector is struggling with serious labor shortages due to the fact that the average monthly salary of childcare workers is roughly 100,000 yen lower than that of all workers (330,000 yen). Nevertheless, the government incorporated no budgetary measures to overcome this problem in this year’s budget.

Past related article:
> Build more public facilities and raise care workers’ wages to achieve ‘zero’ waiting list to enter childcare centers [March 13, 2016]