(HARA
Eiji, PPPC President)
The
Revised Temp Labor Act is becoming one of the controversial issues in the
current Diet session. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan and some media
have taken critical attitudes to the draft bill that this is an excessive “deregulation”
in accordance with requests of the business side which desires to make use of
temp workers more easily.
However,
the content of the revised bill is, in short, a specification of the rules; one
that attempts to transfer the existing, complicated and ambiguous rules into
more clarified ones. As a matter of fact, it entails not only the “deregulating”
contents but also “reregulating” aspects.
The
existing Act has divided the occupations into “26 expert types” (digital-device
operating, secretary, interpreter, etc.) and the “others”, to which having applied
different rules.
l There is no limit of
receiving temp workers in the 26 expert types
l There have been
one-year limit (exceptionally three-years limit) in the others
Yet,
there have been various questions to the existing distinction that how much can
be fitted into the 26 occupations or whether the law applies when someone
engaged into undescribed jobs, etc.; all rooting from the fact that the rules have
been too unspecified and complicated. From the beginning, there has been an
outdated aspect that operation of digital device has been considered as an
expert duty.
In
the revised bill this time, by abolishing the existing distinction of “26
expert jobs” and the “others” and it attempts to set
l Individual: maximum
three years if the same worker kept working in the same office
l Office: maximum three
years of accepting temp worker in the same office, yet, extendable after
hearing opinions of majority in the office
Seemingly
it can be regarded as a “reasonable improvement” of existing inadequacy in the
current legislation. In the deregulation-reregulation spectrum,
l Reception of temp
workers in the “other jobs” will be extendable with certain conditions,
l It entails a “reregulation”
aspect in the reception of “26 expert jobs” by imposing new time limit
In
the current extraordinary Diet session, while the opposition lawmakers have
sought to raise the issue by repeating questions whether the temp workers will
increase by this revision of the Act (Lower House Budget Committee on October
3), such arguments might not be constructive given the content of the bill
mentioned above.
Rather,
the point of discussion should be what to do with the issue of irregular
employment as the next step to the “temporary improvement” this time.
It
is absolutely doubtless that irregular employees are in severely unstable
situations compared to the so-called regular workers and something must be
done. The problem is how solutions are to be presented.
The
first scenario is to deny irregular employments and to attempt to make all workers
regular. Many of the legislations proposed and implemented in the DPJ
administration basically originated from such perspectives.
However,
there are points to be raised in this scenario.
l First, not-all
irregular workers necessarily desire to be regular employees, and there are
certain numbers of irregular workers who has chosen to be irregular employees
by themselves (according to debate on October 3, the ratio is 50% in the
government’ view and 40% in DPJ’s calculation).
l Making all irregular
workers regular sounds like an effort to improve the employment situation,
however, it may in turn deprive opportunities of many others in reality (in
extreme cases, e.g., overall banning of irregular employment might create
complete unemployment of many others because all the irregular workers cannot
be regular at once).
Then
the more realistic approach is the second scenario that dispels gap between the
regular and irregular, i.e., penetrating the principle of “same job, same wage,”
while admitting variety of labor.
While
in Europe and others, the principle of “same job, same wage” is manifested in
the general legislation, it is naturally perceived that there are gaps between
irregular and regular in Japan. Efforts to solve the situation should be now
discussed.
To
add, the gap between irregular and regular does not only exist in the private
sector, but also in the central government offices including the Ministry of
Health, Labor and Welfare which has jurisdiction over the employment policy.
There
is an advertisement for open recruitment of irregular employees in the website
of MHLW that says \7,000-10,000/day for assistant or secretary duties. Needless
to say, this is apart from the working conditions of the general government
employees protected by job security and the National Personnel Authority (http://www.mhlw.go.jp/general/saiyo/hijoukin.html).
What
to do with the irregular employment? Hot to attain the principle of “same job,
same wage”? Solutions must be proposed, first by the central government
ministries.
It
is hopeful that discussions in eye of the drastic reform on this issue will be
made in the Diet.
In
the meantime, there are further challenges;
l Basically, it should
seek attainment of “same job, same wage” principle and the regulations binding
various ways of working should be eradicated
l Rather than “making
all irregular regular,” it should seek “valuing various ways of working” + “prohibition
of different treatments on irregular workers”
l “Valuing various ways
of working” is also important from the view of increasing fluidity of the labor
market. It is incorrect to assume that “all irregular desires to be regular”
l The issue of “prohibition
of temp day laborer” left untouched.
Number
of Temp Workers = 1.3 million (data released in March 2014)
