Tokyo's Temp Triumphs &Troubles
Thursday, May 15, 2008JEFF YASTINE: From U.S. corporate management practices to Japan where lifetime employment was once taken for granted. The prolonged recession of the 1990's sparked labor-law deregulation that let companies rely heavily on part-time workers. The temp revolution has helped Japanese companies weather global competition. But as Lucy Craft reports from Tokyo, many part-timers complain they can't make ends meet and the change have repercussions for the economy as a whole.
LUCY CRAFT, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: In Japan, it's the heyday of the temp worker. Japan was once renowned for its paternalistic and static system of jobs for life. But in less than a decade, this nation of corporate warriors has wharfed into the land of part-timers. Today one out of every three workers is a temp, the highest ratio of non-regular workers in the industrialized world. Temp placement agencies like number two Pasona Group have seen sales explode.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 17.50 again per hour. It gives you what kind of job you are going to be doing, what kind of place it is, where it's at, how many people they are looking for.
CRAFT: A generation ago, Pasona stock and trade was finding clerical jobs for housewives. Pasona spokesman Keisuke Nemoto says the firm now brokers positions for practically any one of almost any job description.
KEISUKE NEMOTO (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Aside from national security, police and medicine, all professions and principal are now open to temp workers. That is why the industry has been expanding 30 to 40 percent annually.
CRAFT: Morgan Stanley economist Robert Feldman says the temp torrent has streamlined costs at corporations and suits the temperament of a more independent generation of Japanese.
ROBERT FELDMAN, SR. ECONOMIST, MORGAN STANLEY: People who would otherwise given institutions otherwise not be able to get jobs are getting jobs. And that's a good thing. In addition, a lot of people don't want to work full-time. They don't want to work under the standard work rules. And for them, the flexible job market is a wonderful thing.
CRAFT: But the boom in part-timers has proved a mixed blessing. Part- timers earn on average only about two-thirds what regular employees make. (INAUDIBLE) part-timers it's dragging down growth in the world's second largest economy. With emptier pockets, Japan's temp heavy workforce has kept domestic demand week and that has prevented Japan from stepping up to the plate to serve as global demand engine in place of a wobbling American economy. Experts like International Christian Universities Naohira Yashiro say the part-time shift has gone too far.
NAOHIRA YASHIRO, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR: Obviously it's not a good thing. But it is inevitable.
CRAFT: He says Japan has ended up with a rigidly segregated labor force, part-timers stuck in the low paid ghetto while regular workers are virtually impossible to layoff, regardless of individual performance or the business cycle.
YASHIRO: In order to reduce the number of temporary workers, some change in employment practice of regular workers also needed. But people don't like that idea.
CRAFT: Analysts reckon full-timers will keep fending off attempts to reduce their unusual job protection and that the temp army will keep adding recruits, hampering personal consumption and growth in the larger economy. Lucy Craft, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Tokyo.
