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- Convenors:
-
Charles Weathers
(Osaka City University )
Scott North (Osaka University)
Shinji Kojima (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University)
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- Stream:
- Economics, Business and Political Economy
- Location:
- Torre B, Piso 3, T11
- Sessions:
- Saturday 2 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
We analyze the Abe Government's employment reform campaign, especially work hours, temporary agency work, and women's employment. The utilization of neoliberal strategies through imbalanced policymaking institutions means that disadvantaged workers, such as care workers, will gain little benefit.
Long Abstract:
The Abe Government has made hatarakikata kaikaku, or Reform of the Japanese Way of Work, central to its campaign to stimulate economic growth and stabilize the population. Many of the Government's objectives -- reducing work hours, reducing wage inequality, and promoting gender equal opportunity -- are usually associated primarily with liberal rather than conservative reformers. However, it is attempting to achieve these objectives primarily through free market or neoliberal-type reforms. This is especially evident with regard to the country's excess work hours: Rather than strengthening worker protections, the Government intends to weaken regulations and change pay systems to encourage workers to work more efficiently. Similarly, policymakers almost completely deregulated temporary agency work in order to enhance labor mobility, but the evidence suggests that temp work has aggravated wage inequality and undermined safety. In addition, the Abe Government is promoting gender equal employment opportunity, especially by bolstering support for childcare and elder care; that will certainly assist parents in white-collar occupations, but the policies provide little help for the care workers (nearly all women), who are among the worst paid workers in Japan. Nor do the reform policies help workers in the other majority-female occupations, such as teaching or library work, troubled by long work hours and substandard pay; rather, these problems are being aggravated by greater use of agency temps and other non-regular workers.
Our panel will explore hatarakikata kaikaku, focusing on work hours, temporary agency work, and women's employment. We argue that the Abe Government's reliance on conservative policymaking tools, such as policymaking forums that largely exclude representatives from major social/occupational groups (such as women) mean that the resulting policies will benefit well-paid employees but do little for disadvantaged workers. While recognizing that neoliberal reformism does not necessarily preclude positive outcomes, we emphasize that the extreme weakness of the left results in a severe imbalance in policymaking influence. Buttressing this point, the three presentations complement policymaking analysis with field work-based examinations of groups that are struggling to resist Abenomics reforms and to strengthen the rights of workers affected.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 2 September, 2017, -Scott North (Osaka University)
Paper short abstract:
Prime Minister Abe's government says it wants to limit work hours to counter the social and personal ills they cause. Opposition parties and others have proposed regulatory remedies. But business interests, who want further deregulation of work hours, dominate the committee discussing work reforms.
Paper long abstract:
Since 1988, more than 30,000 applications for workers' compensation have been filed in Japan for deaths and disabilities caused by overwork; nearly 40% have been approved. These claims represent the tip of the overwork iceberg. The 2014 passage of the Karoshi Prevention Countermeasures Promotion Law (過労死等防止対策推進法) represents government recognition of labor activists' repeatedly demonstrated view that long (often uncompensated) work hours damage individual health, lower productivity, and contribute to social inequality by inhibiting female labor force participation and career development. The 2014 law makes government responsible for the karoshi problem. What, then, are the prospects that it will enact labor law reforms to reduce or cap the length of the working day? Publicly available documentary evidence of deliberations in the Committee for Realizing Reform of the Japanese Way of Work shows how absence of opposition allows the government to strike a liberal pose, although its positions are almost as neoliberal as those of business. Under Abenomics, Japan cut corporate taxes and pursued other ends that dovetail with business community desires. Concerning work hours, the Committee's agenda includes reintroducing a failed 2006 plan to end overtime pay for the majority of white-collar workers. However, this time it will be aimed (initially) only at relatively high-income "professionals." Instead of a uniform cap, work hours negotiated on an enterprise basis, as well as increased use of self-discretionary and flexible work hours practices, and expanded exemptions from overtime regulations are being discussed. Labor representatives are a distinct minority on the Committee. Moreover, Japan's unions prioritize members' job security over work hours concerns. Although opposition parties and the Japan Labor Lawyers Association argue cogently that fines and criminal penalties for overwork are necessary to combat karoshi, the government faces minimal electoral pressure to back opposition proposals to limit work hours, such as the "interval system" in use in the EU. Consequently work hours "reform" will likely strengthen the legislative basis for Japanese management's customary authority over the length of the working day.
Charles Weathers (Osaka City University )
Paper short abstract:
The Abe Government has prioritized support for working women. However, the Government's policymaking contradictions mean that workers, predominantly women, in public service jobs such as care work and teaching will continue to face severely unequal employment practices.
Paper long abstract:
Japan has long been seen as a serious laggard in gender equal employment opportunity, largely because of the weakness of its unions and left-wing political parties. But with both economic growth and the birthrate low, the unflinchingly conservative Abe Shinzo Government is making women's workplace advancement a cornerstone of its ambitious economic agenda. Since 2013, the Government has launched a wide range of initiatives, including the Society in Which Women Can Shine, intended to advance the interests of working women. Equal pay for equal work, reduced work hours, and stronger support for childcare are cornerstones of the campaign.
However, the Abe Government's various policies will likely help primarily professional and white-collar women, while doing little for women in lower-status or public service jobs. This report argues that the government's neoliberal proclivities will inhibit it from undertaking the difficult reforms necessary to help women in many socially important but market-disadvantaged occupations. I focus on public service and public sector occupations such as care work, teaching, library work, and counseling (regarding concerns such as job-hunting and family problems). Such occupations are important to the formation of human capital, but they rarely pay professional or even living wages without strong government commitment. This situation is aggravated by the nation's policymaking imbalance. Despite the official commitment to gender equality, for example, childcare and public education have seen conditions deteriorate drastically since 2000, largely because of the increased use of non-regular workers. The nation's difficult fiscal condition (at all policymaking levels) makes it difficult to improve employment conditions for public employees, but the Abe Government has aggravated the problem by reducing corporate taxes.
I complement the explanation of the policymaking contradictions with short examination of the campaigns being waged for public sector non-regular workers. As specific cases will show, these campaigns have made only incremental progress because of discriminatory laws, an unfriendly legal system, and severe fiscal pressures.
Shinji Kojima (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University)
Paper short abstract:
Drastic reform of the Worker Dispatching Act is an important part of the Abe administration's campaign to expand the freedom of employers and workers to adopt diverse work styles. However, the reforms have so far kept workers lives in precarity, and they have little hope towards the future.
Paper long abstract:
The Worker Dispatching Act underwent a series of revisions between its enactment in 1986 and 2015. Each revision lifted restrictions on the usage of temporary agency workers, making temp work more widespread. Using archival and ethnographic data, this paper examines the specific nature of the neoliberal legal reforms and the limited positive impact they have had on worker wellbeing. LDP administrations have hitherto aimed at stimulating economic growth by weakening regulations and increasing employment flexibility. In the current Abe administration the "Committee to Reform of the Japanese Way of Work" aims to expand the freedom of both employers and workers to adopt "diverse work styles." These neoliberal reform principles have sustained legal loopholes for employers who wish to continue using cheap labor flexibly, while supposedly guaranteeing upward mobility for the temp workers with the skills and the will to work on equal terms with regular workers. In addition, the Abe administration is seeking to implement the principle of equal pay for equal work, which should in theory benefit existing temp workers while encouraging more people to enter the labor market and positively choose temp work as a work/life style. However, how the legal statute will be designed, and who among the diverse group of temp workers will benefit remain uncertain. The reality of employment practices on the ground has so far made temporary agency workers suffer from economic insecurity and harbor strong anxiety towards the future. Temp law reforms have not contributed to nurturing hope among younger workers, and having a family remains a distant dream for those who suffer from precarity. As a result, deregulation of temporary work is undermining the Abe administration's objective of using labor reform to help revive the low birthrate and stimulate consumption. Labor unions have been using labor disputes to create momentum to impact labor law legislation at the national level. These struggles have been an uphill battle, given the hostile court decisions and the weak representation of labor in labor reform committees.