Japan Press Weekly

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2015 July 15 - 21 [LABOR]

Experience as temps won’t help them find regular job

“A temporary job will not be a stepping-stone to a regular job.” This is a remark made by a scholar who supports a government-sponsored bill to deregulate the use of temporary workers.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo keeps insisting in Diet discussions that it will help temporary workers to further their careers and find regular jobs.

Chuo University Professor Abe Masahiro was a member of the labor ministry’s Labor Policy Council, which compiled the draft revision to the act.

At the council’s working group meeting in November 2013, Professor Abe introduced survey results of workers in the U.S. industrial city of Detroit.

The survey shows what became of unemployed workers after they got temporary jobs or direct employment contracts.

According to that data, temps earned higher wages at first than those on direct employment contracts.

One year later, however, temporary workers’ wages leveled off or even declined, while directly-hired employees’ wages increased. Meanwhile, the percentage of directly-employed workers who continued to work for more than a year was higher than that of agency workers. This indicates that many of the temps again joined the ranks of the unemployed without obtaining permanent jobs.

Contrary to PM Abe’s argument, it is obvious that the bill to further promote the use of temps will help bar the door to regular jobs.

Past related article:
> Abe’s deregulation of use of temps will lead to expansion of informal economy [July 1, 2015]