Vol. 73/No. 7      February 23, 2009

These workers, who earn lower pay and fewer benefits than regular full-time workers, comprise more than one-third of the 55.3 million workers in Japan. Their numbers shot up from one-fourth of the workforce 10 years ago, as new labor laws lifted restrictions on temporary employees working on factory lines.

Temporary workers make up the vast majority of those being laid off. According to the government labor ministry, about 131,000 layoffs have been announced since October. Of these, 125,000 are temporary contract workers. Official unemployment figures in Japan rose to 4.4 percent in December from 3.9 percent the month before.

More than half of these workers are ineligible for unemployment payments since government regulations require them to have held the same job for at least a year. Most temporary workers, whose contracts can be as short as two months, have worked the same job for less than a year, said the New York Times. In many cases, upon being laid off they are also ordered to vacate their apartments, which some bosses rent to them while they’re employees of that company.

These workers have been taking to the streets in protests. Over the New Year holiday, reported the Times, “some 500 disgruntled former temporary workers made homeless by layoffs built an impromptu tent city in a Tokyo park adjacent to the Labor Ministry.” In response to public outcry, Tokyo is now promising to provide unemployment benefits to those who have worked six months or more.

Among the latest employers to announce layoffs is Nissan Motor Co., the third largest car and truck producer in Japan. The company said February 9 that it was eliminating 20,000 jobs at its plants worldwide, 9 percent of its workforce. More than half of the job cuts will be in Japan, involving thousands of short-term workers. The company will slash another 4,000 workers at plants in the United States and Spain.

Nissan, which is 44 percent owned by Renault, already cut production to a four-day workweek at its U.S. auto plants and is seeking union agreement to establish this at others. Declining sales, including a 31 percent drop in the United States in January, has company officials projecting a $2.9 billion loss for the financial year ending next month. This follows similar profit losses by Toyota, Mazda, and Mitsubishi. Toyota now projects a $5 billion loss this fiscal year, its first loss since the end of World War II.

Honda, Japan’s second largest automobile company, announced in mid-January that it is cutting 3,100 jobs in Japan and reducing domestic production by 56,000 vehicles. Company officials said that they would not renew contracts with temporary workers in April.

Industrial production in Japan dropped 9.6 percent in December from the previous month, the steepest such decline on record in the world’s second biggest economy. Other major corporations slashing jobs there include electronics giant NEC, which is laying off 20,000 workers worldwide, and Hitachi, set to cut 7,000. Panasonic is cutting 15,000 jobs, about 5 percent of its workforce, and will close 27 factories—13 in Japan and 14 more around the world.
 
 
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