Terrie’s Take on how NJ workers are the first to go in adverse economic conditions

Posted on December 8, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. I’ve been sitting on this information for over a month, sorry, but here’s another article from the ever-informative Terrie’s Take, regarding how the economic downturn is influencing Japanese companies’ employment decisions.

As might be expected, at the first sign of any trouble, the first to be fired are the NJ workers. Those brought in under a questionable visa regime from 1990 to save Japanese industry from “hollowing out”, turns out the cost-cutting long-hour NJ workers have the least job security. People might argue that laying off foreigners first happens anywhere, but Japan has stricter glass ceilings by nationality. Employers in Japan have issues with letting foreigners (except maybe a few token high-profile bosses) actually graduate out of contract labor (as can be seen most effectively in Japan university system) into becoming “real employees”; heaven forbid if NJ in Japanese companies actually got managerial roles over fellow Japanese co-workers. Even the Japanese Supreme Court has ruled that that kind of discrimination is legal. Anyway, Terrie focusses upon the restructuring numbers below. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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From: terrie@mailman.japaninc.com
Subject: Terrie’s Take 492 — Job Cuts in Full Swing, ebiz news from Japan
Date: November 3, 2008 12:49:14 AM JST

* * * * * * * * * T E R R I E ‘S T A K E * * * * * * *
A weekly roundup of news & information from Terrie Lloyd.
(http://www.terrie.com)

General Edition Sunday, November 2, 2008 Issue No. 492

SUBSCRIBE to, UNSUBSCRIBE from Terrie’s Take at:
http://mailman.japaninc.com/mailman/listinfo/terrie

The global nature of the financial meltdown over the last 4 weeks has meant three sure outcomes for major businesses here in Japan: 1) there is no market in which to seek safe haven, 2) even the healthiest of large companies is having to batten down the hatches for a rough 2009 — this is of course what is killing the stock market, and 3), a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.

The job-cutting aspect has already started in a number of Japanese manufacturers, but looking at the employment figures put out by the government, you wouldn’t know it. This is because, we suspect, Japanese firms are cutting the easiest-to-trim sections of their workforces first, and thus the numbers won’t become apparent until the cuts go deeper into their core full-timer workforces early next year.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the nation’s jobless rate actually fell, from 4.2% in August to 4% in September — with about 2.71m people out of work. This means that the workforce currently numbers around 63.95m people.

As with most things, the USA is much quicker to reflect the reality of the current turmoil, and there the unemployment is already at around 6.1% of the workforce, with about 479,000 new jobless registering last month. This is significantly up from the 332,000 who were unemployed a year ago, although less than the peak 499,000 registering after hurricanes Ike and Gustav hit several months back. Apparently U.S. companies have already cut 760,000 jobs in the last 9 months.

So is unemployment really down in Japan? Or is this the calm before the storm?

Experts in the USA are predicting that the unemployment rate there for next year will rise to 8% or more, a surge of 30% over the current rate. Now, 400,000 newly unemployed is already considered a recessionary environment in the U.S., so with even more people set to lose their jobs, fear will increase and consumer spending will drop even further. Most Japanese exporters either make products for global consumers, or tools for companies that do, and either way they’re going to be hit by the downturn. Although the delay in layoffs may be longer, because Japanese firms are reluctant to take the PR hit that comes with layoffs, the fact is that there is already a precedent for letting people go in an acceptable manner — being set by Matsushita and others back in the late 1990’s. So we believe that the job cuts are not long in coming.

Or, more correctly, perhaps we should say that the job cuts are already happening, but the local media is downplaying the trend…

First to go have been the foreign workers in overseas plants. Two weeks ago, Nissan announced that it would cut its workforce by 1,680 people at its Barcelona assembly plant — one of two major plants the company has in Europe. This is almost 1/3 of all the people working at that facility and represents the halting of one of the 3 production shifts. Sales of vehicles in Spain have plunged 24% in the last 9 months, and when the numbers finally come out at the end of the year, we expect that sales for this current quarter might be almost non-existent. Indeed, Peugot has said that it expects a 17% fall in auto sales in Q4 in Western Europe. We think the final numbers will be worse and Japanese firms will share blood shed.

Certainly Toyota knows this, and so the company is laying off another category of “outsiders” — non-permanent workers at its factories here in Japan. Apparently the company employs 6,800 contract workers, also known as fixed-term workers, a number which is 2,000 down from March and 4,000 down from the peak of 10,800 employed in 2004. Back then, non-permanents accounted for 30% of the company’s total workforce. The thing about these contract workers is that so long as they are employed for less than 36 months, then the company can flexibility lay them off in times of hardship — as will many other companies around the country now that Toyota has set the pace.

In addition, in Q2, June-August this year, Toyota laid off an extra 8,000 temporary workers — for a total of around 10,000 redundancies so far this year. Are you seeing these numbers in the major newspapers? Not really. This is probably because Japan’s number one advertiser is sitting on an estimated JPY4trn (US$40bn) of cash reserves (not including other assets) which make it difficult for the company to defend its actions in the Japanese context of being needed to be seen to be looking after your own. In this respect, the message clearly is that you need to be a full-time employee to be considered “one of the Toyota family”. Otherwise you’re just a squatter.

Now that Toyota, a core company in the Japanese industrial complex, has been able to lay off so many people and yet has drawn no protests from the politicians, bureaucrats, or press, this portends badly for a large number of Japanese working in other companies and who are also not full-time employees. Some readers may recall that out of 64m (approx.) workers in Japan, a full 33.5% (as of 2007) are now part-timers, contract employees, temps, freeters, or otherwise non-permanent workers. For these people, the on-going downturn represents a high likelihood that many of them will be handed termination notices over the next 3-6 months.

However, they can’t afford to not work. According to a recent Reuters article, there are now more than 10m “working poor” in Japan. The term apparently refers to those earning less than JPY2m (US$20,000) a year.

Lastly, it surprised us to learn in an AP article that the government does NOT track the number of jobless foreigners. Surprising if only because we’re all paying taxes and unemployment benefits. Maybe these aren’t counted either?

So, given that there are at least 755,000 foreigners (as of 2006) working here in Japan, and probably another 350,000 or so working illegally, you can bet that this group will be another at-risk segment to lose their jobs. The AP article says that the government HELLO WORK centers used to get about 700 foreigners looking for jobs each month, but in August due to the massive layoffs by auto manufacturers, the numbers of foreign newly jobless people doubled to 1,500 a month. Local officials note that the number of Japanese applicants has not changed appreciably (yet) — so clearly Toyota, Honda, and Yamaha are dumping on their Brazilian-Japanese and Chinese workers first.

Could be a bleak Christmas for many people.

ends

JALT TLT: James McCrostie on NJ job insecurity at Japan’s universities

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s a nice short 500-word summary of one issue I’ve been covering for more than ten years now: Academic Apartheid in Japan’s Universities. Reprinted with permission of the author. Arudou Debito in transit

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Behind the Music: An explanation of the university shuffle
James McCrostie
Published in the April 2007 issue of JALT’s The Language Teacher
in the Job Info Center column (p. 45 – 46).

Working at Japanese universities resembles musical chairs. Every year the music starts and instructors with expiring contracts run around looking for a new job. Most universities hiring foreigners full-time offer one-year contracts, renewable three or four times. Contrary to popular belief, universities don’t cap renewals at three or four because if a teacher works long enough they can’t be fired. Schools remain safe as long as they state the number of renewals and a few have contracts renewable up to ten years.

To most thinking people, forcing instructors to leave every few years appears short sighted. Yet, university and government officials have their own reasons for preferring term-limits.

Keeping costs down is one reason. The penny pinching began in December 1992 when Ministry of Education officials phoned all the national universities and warned them against keeping foreign teachers in the higher pay brackets. Schools soon sacked foreigners over the age of 50 (most had been promised a job until retirement), replaced them with teachers on capped contracts, and refused to hire anyone over the age of 35 or 40 (Hall, 1994). Yet, despite a 1997 law allowing universities to employ Japanese faculty on term-limited contracts, the use of capped contracts to economize, while increasing, remains largely limited to foreign staff (Arudou & McLaughlin, 2001).

Attitudes towards foreign teachers reveal the more important reason for the caps. University and Ministry of Education bureaucrats regard foreigners as models of foreign culture with expiry dates stamped on their foreheads rather than real teachers who have a long-term role to play. For example, Niigata University’s president admitted wanting foreigners “churning over constantly” (JPRI Staff, 1996). In an Asahi Shimbun editorial, Shinichiro Noriguchi, a University of Kitakyushu English professor, contends “native speakers who have lived in Japan for more than ten years tend to have adapted to the system and have become ineffective as teachers” (Noriguchi, 2006).

Ministry of Education officials justified firing older foreigners from national universities by arguing younger instructors would be better examples of American culture (Hall, 1998). Nearly a decade later, Ministry bureaucrats justified term-limits by contending they “encouraged the movement of teachers to other universities which was of benefit to both teachers and the universities” (Cleary, 2001). Exactly how they benefited anyone was left unsaid.

If nothing else such attitudes are at least consistent, changing little since the Meiji Era. Viewing foreigners as disposable goes back to the 1903 sacking of Lafcadio Hearn from what is now Tokyo University.

Are the caps discriminatory? While nearly every Japanese instructor receives tenure from the day they are hired and nearly every foreigner is shown the door after a few years the Supreme Court, with a little legal legerdemain, ruled that such hiring practices don’t violate the Labor Standards Law which applies only after someone has been hired (van Dresser, 2001).

Luckily, some universities do appreciate that employing foreigners permanently can benefit a school. So what’s a foreigner in search of job stability to do? Getting a doctorate couldn’t hurt but the key is Japanese fluency. According to activist Arudou Debito “you’ve simply got to understand what’s going on around you” (Arudou, personal communication). Then again, neither provided much protection during the purge of the 1990’s.

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References

Arudou, D. and McLaughlin, J. (2001). Employment conditions in the university: Update autumn 2001. JALT Kitakyushu Presentation. Retrieved January 20, 2007 from https://www.debito.org/JALTninkisei112401.html

Cleary, F. (2001). Taking it to the Ministry of Education: Round three. Pale Journal. 7(1). Retrieved January 20, 2007 from https://www.debito.org/HELPSpring2001.html#kumamoto

Hall, I. (1994). Academic Apartheid at Japan’s National Universities. JPRI Working Paper No. 3. Retrieved January 21, 2007 from http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp3.html

Hall, I. (1998) Cartels of the Mind: Japan’s Intellectual Closed Shop. New York: W. W. Norton.

JPRI Staff. (1996). Foreign teachers in Japanese universities: An update.
JPRI Working Paper, 24. Retrieved January 20, 1997 from http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp24.html

Noriguchi, S. (2006). English education leaves much to be desired. Asahi Shimbun, Sep. 15, 2006. Retrieved January 20, 2007 from http://www.asahi.com/english/Heraldasahi/TKY200609150129.html

van Dresser, S. (2001). On the employment rights of repeatedly renewed contract workers. PALE Journal, 7(1). Retrieved January 20, 2007 from https://www.debito.org/HELPSpring2001.html#vandresser
ENDS

FYI: People working for American companies in Japan are covered by US Civil Rights Law

Posted on November 22, 2008November 22, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Hi Blog. Here’s a note on a subject that may help people working for American multinational companies. They have double labor rights/civil rights protections — both American and Japanese. And apparently the American government links to the civil rights authorities of other countries/unions like Canada and the EU. More on the EEOC site. Further, HANDBOOK FOR NEWCOMERS, MIGRANTS, AND IMMIGRANTS has been helping people define their terms and anchor their arguments. Happy to hear. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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Did you happen to know that U.S. civil rights law (equal employment opportunities, or EEO) applies to U.S. citizens working abroad for U.S. multinational companies?

http://www.eeoc.gov/abouteeo/overview_coverage.html

under: “Multinational Employers”

This is a heads up to the expat community. Very few know that if they are working for the Japanese sub of an American company, and feel they are being discriminated or not given equal opportunities (based on a U.S. understanding of what that is!), they can go to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) in the US.

EEOC Charge mediation is confidential.

http://www.eeoc.gov/mediate/facts.html

Very few American-parent companies here tell their workers about the EEO coverage. Basically, Congress wrote the law to hold the American parent liable for the activities of the overseas company that it controls. So one possible remedy is filing an EEO complaint, which can be done over the internet. Employers are supposed to tell the employees about these coverages and remedies — it says so in the 1964 act.

One thing that should also be pointed out is that there is a statute of limitations on EEOC charges. Usually this is 300 days, but in some instances might only be 180 days. It isn’t clear, though, that if the company does not NOTIFY you of the coverage, whether these limitations would apply. So to be on the safe side, assume 180 days.

There is also a non-retaliation provision: Form 5 information page states:

NOTICE OF NON-RETALIATION REQUIREMENTS

“Please notify EEOC or state and local agency where you filed your charge if retaliation is taken against you or others who oppose discrimination or cooperate in any investigation or lawsuit concerning this charge. Under Section 704(a) of Title VII, . . . [etc.], it is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against present or former employees or job applicants, for an employment agency to discriminate against anyone, or for a union to discriminate against its members or membership applicants, because they have opposed any practice made unlawful by the statutes, or because they have made a charge, testified, assisted or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under the laws . . . “

HANDBOOK has been very handy in explaining Japanese labor law, since it is not exactly the subject of substantial English-language literature in other countries or languages. In addition, letting people around Japan know about the EEO coverage, it helps anyone who is caught in a similar bind. Japanese labor law investigators don’t seem to be all that vigilant when it comes to foreigners — not only language barriers, but also a sense that the foreign person “really isn’t supposed to be here” in the first place.

ENDS

Negative survey of NJ employers by J headhunting company “Careercross” to make “employers see their own bias”

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

mytest

Turning the keyboard over to member of The Community, about an issue recently uncovered:

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Date: November 6, 2008 12:35:18 AM JST
From BCD at The Community

Community,

Below is a survey I just saw on Careercross.com, which, if you don’t know it, is a job placement site.

CareerCross provides information on bilingual employment in Japan for bilingual Japanese and English speakers, plus an invaluable resource for non-Japanese Living and Working in Japan.
http://www.careercross.com/

Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive or something, but something about these questions, targeted at foreign employers of Japanese seems wrong.

I can only imagine that if a similar survey were asked in any other country, where any racial group as asked to rate and compare another racial group, it would cause a hell of a fuss. Pick any two racial groups… the kinds of questions asked here seem to be in really poor judgment.

What do you guys think? Is there an unsavoury form of cultural insensitivity being displayed here or am I seeing something that isn’t there?

The questions are as follows:

1. How comfortable are you working with Japanese subordinates?
Comfortable
Somewhat comfortable
Neither comfortable, nor uncomfortable
Somewhat uncomfortable
Uncomfortable