Japan Pension Service, an organization set up to take over the work of the Social Insurance Agency, will start operations Friday. Though the new entity will attempt to regain trust of the public by tackling problems such as the pension records fiasco, it faces many hurdles.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama met the 13 people chosen to be directors of the new entity at the Prime Minister’s Office last Friday.

“One of the driving forces behind the shift of power [the election of the DPJ-led government] was the pension record fiasco,” Hatoyama said. “I want this entity to be one that gives priority to the interests of subscribers.”

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20091231TDY03105.htm

An advisory panel to the labor minister issued a report Monday recommending that staffing agencies be prohibited from registering workers on individual contracts for specific jobs that pay only when work is available.

The report, which also proposes banning the practice of sending workers for short-term manufacturing jobs, comes in line with a government plan to submit a bill to the Diet to improve the working conditions of temporary staff by tightening the law regulating their dispatch.

About 2.02 million people worked as temp staff as of June 2008, and some 440,000 of them would likely be subject to the proposed regulations, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

The move, aimed at stabilizing employment, signifies a policy shift to tighten control on the temporary worker system, which has experienced gradual deregulation in staffing services since the law took effect in 1986.

The subcommittee’s report recommends prohibiting the dispatch of temp workers on a registration basis, except for 26 types of jobs that require professional skills and expertise, including secretarial work and translation, and jobs involving the dispatch of elderly workers.

It also seeks a ban on dispatching temporary workers for manufacturing jobs, except in cases where staffing agencies conclude long-term job contracts with workers.

For clarification, the regulations will be put into practice on a date set by ordinance within three years after the revised law is promulgated.

Among registration-basis temp jobs, those that match the needs of workers and face few problems, including clerical jobs, will be prohibited after five years at the latest.

Conditions of so-called registered temp workers – those who register with staffing companies and get an employment contract only for the duration of a job – are particularly poor, critics say.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20091229a1.html

The global recession that started in autumn last year has dramatically highlighted the vulnerability of temporary and other nonregular workers at this time of economic contraction.

In response, the government started reviewing the worker dispatch law at the Labor Policy Council, which advises Akira Nagatsuma, the minister of health, labor and welfare. The council has come up with an outline of a bill to revise the law.

According to the outline, the revision would, in principle, ban companies from using registration type of recruiting, in which employment contracts are drawn up only when there are jobs for dispatched workers. The ban would not be applied to 26 job categories that demand a high level of skill, such as interpreters. The ban would not apply to aged dispatched workers as well.

Supplying haken dispatched workers for manufacturing jobs would be allowed only for positions for what is essentially regular work in which individuals have a reasonable chance of winning a relatively long-term labor contract with the companies that recruit them. This is a key issue because of the large number of dispatched workers in manufacturing who lost their jobs after economic conditions slid and manufactures moved to trim their payrolls.

Supplying temps for day-labor jobs–the most unstable form of employment–would also be prohibited, except for limited categories. The revision would also require companies to stop treating subcontractors as effectively dispatched workers who are subject to company supervision. If such practices are found, the new regulation will regard those firms as having hired these workers.

There is strong opposition to the proposed steps within the business community. Critics say banning the registration system to recruit dispatched workers and the supply of temps on a daily basis would raise unemployment by making it harder for companies to use haken workers.

Others argue that tightening the regulation on supplying dispatched workers to manufacturers would prompt more companies to shift production overseas, causing further jobs losses. These arguments, however, don’t present a strong case for allowing nonregular workers to bear the brunt of the economic downturn as people who can be brought in or laid off more easily than regular employees.

Past revisions to the worker dispatch law have basically eased the regulations on the dispatched-worker industry to promote labor liquidity. The new proposals are significant in that they would change policy by protecting workers.

The envisioned change, however, would leave some problems unsolved. Even the hiring of people on a dispatched basis–for less than a year, for instance–could be regarded as almost regular employment. Workers under subcontracts who are treated effectively as temps would be regarded as employees directly hired by the companies that use them, but only for the period of their contracts with the companies that supplied them. This could lead to a situation where companies that use temps would not take sufficient responsibility for the well-being of these individuals. The bans on the registration-type recruitment of dispatched workers and the supply of temps to manufacturers would take effect only three to five years after the revised law is proclaimed.

The Diet should discuss these and other related issues, including arguments by employers, during the regular session to be convened in January. The revision of the law would not address all the problems concerning nonregular workers. There is still a basic problem facing the government and society as a whole.

The wide disparity in incomes between regular and nonregular workers due to the lack of recognition of dispatched and other nonregular positions as legitimate options to increase diversity in workstyles has become a major issue. The principle of the same pay for the same work is the norm in Europe. It may be unrealistic to expect an early introduction of this principle in Japan. But serious efforts should be made to establish this rule.

There should be limits to the renewals and periods of contracts with nonregular workers to reduce the benefits for companies of depending on such workers as a buffer against a downturn.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200912290117.html

Third-grade students at Osaka municipal Kita-Nakajima Primary School get insights into culture on the Korean Peninsula that many others do not.

Their homeroom teacher is Lee Chi I, 31, a third-generation South Korean living in Japan. Lee’s grandfather came from South Korea’s Gyeongsangnam-do, but she was born and raised in Aichi Prefecture.

Students at the school in Yodogawa Ward include children of Koreans living in Japan, but Lee introduces musical instruments such as the chango, a Korean drum, to all the pupils in her music class.

Lee is one of an increasing number of foreign nationals teaching at public primary, middle and high schools across the country. An estimated 200 non-Japanese teachers, mainly Koreans living in Japan, teach at schools in 25 prefectures, including Osaka, Hyogo, Kanagawa and Kyoto.

The government approved the hiring of teachers with a foreign nationality at public schools in 1991.

According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, foreign national teachers can be “full-time lecturers with unlimited tenure,” but they are not eligible to hold management positions, such as being the senior classroom teacher. They have the same educational authority as Japanese teachers, and can be homeroom teachers.

The Osaka prefectural and municipal governments started hiring foreign national teachers on their own accord in the 1970s. Although they stopped this practice in 1982 in line with an instruction from the central government, they resumed hiring non-Japanese in 1993 following the abolition of the Japanese nationality requirement. This academic year, 135 non-Japanese were teachers in the prefecture.

Lee had gone by the Japanese name Chisato Miyamoto until she graduated from university.

“I felt deep down as if I was hiding my true self,” she said of those years.

Lee decided to identify herself by her real Korean name following advice from members of the Osaka Municipal Board of Education and the principal who hired her as a teacher six years ago.

“They told me children who have roots on the Korean Peninsula would be encouraged if I used my real Korean name,” Lee said.

Lee now teaches children about Korean culture and has explained her ethnic background to students and their parents.

An estimated 60 percent to 70 percent of foreign national teachers in Osaka Prefecture have revealed their ethnic roots in their schools.

Fifty-two foreign national teachers from 11 cities in the prefecture shared their experiences at the inaugural meeting of a network of teachers with roots in foreign countries, held in Osaka on Nov. 7. They plan to hold meetings to discuss their ethnic backgrounds and educational issues.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20091229TDY03105.htm

The Tokyo District Court acquitted a Ghanaian man Tuesday of striking a police officer in Tokyo last year. [A NUGW Tokyo Nambu member], 49, was found not guilty of obstructing the officer in the performance of his duties by striking him in the face with his right arm on a street in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward on Nov 7 last year after the officer asked him to show his alien registration card.

Presiding Judge Noriki Ando said the defendant has a disability in his right arm and that he cannot raise it higher than shoulder level, and that it is hard to recognize he intentionally struck the officer’s face. The judge said the possibility cannot be denied that his hand happened to hit the officer when the defendant moved his body.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/ghanaian-man-acquitted-of-striking-police-officer-in-tokyo