Japan Press Weekly

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2012 August 29 - September 4 TOP3 [LABOR]

Number of contingent workers hits record high at Japan’s big automakers

The number of contingent workers and the ratio of them to all workers has reached a record high at Japan’s big 3 automakers.

Akahata found this out through surveying the financial reports of Toyota, Nissan, and Honda.

The number of all employees and contingent workers are entered in the annual financial reports, and the category “contingent workers” includes fixed-term employees, part-timers, and temporary workers.

The 3 carmakers had 132,699 contingent workers in March 2008. Following the Lehman shock in autumn of the year, the companies executed mass dismissals of their contingent workers. The number of contingent workers dropped to 95,426 in March 2010.

After that, car production gradually recovered due to economic stimulus measures taken by the government such as tax reductions for buyers of eco-friendly vehicles and an increase of the reconstruction demand following the Great East Japan Disaster in 2011. Accordingly, the number of contingent workers increased to 138,476 as of March 2012, exceeding the record in 2008. The proportion of contingent workers to all employees also reached an all-time high of 17.1%.

Sasaki Shozo, an executive director of the Japan Research Institute of Labor Movement (Rodo-soken), points out that Japan’s big automakers have used contingent workers as a “control valve” in production.

Sasaki said, “The rise in the number of contingent workers leads to cuts in people’s income. As a result, the domestic market will shrink and the economy will remain in bad shape. To improve the economy, it is needed to change the society into one in which all workers can work as regular employees.”