Tag - labor

 
 

LABOR

COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
Jun 18, 2013
Why workers can no longer wear their demands on their sleeves
Dear reader, where are you from? To what era do you belong? I was born in 1971 in Japan and grew up here, too, but I've never — in all my years visiting hotels, restaurants, shops or government offices — seen workers wearing vests, armbands, badges, ribbons or bandanas with political messages. I've...
EDITORIALS
Jun 14, 2013
Tricks with labor rules
Labor groups suspect that the Abe government's push for more workers with 'permanent employee status' is a ruse to give employers more flexibility to fire.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
May 28, 2013
When can you fight a job transfer?
A foreign reader writes: "My husband is working for a company that has branches in Shinagawa, Narita and Ibaraki. He used to work at the Shinagawa branch, and then he was forced to move to the Narita branch.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
May 21, 2013
Precedent backs (nearly) equal pay for equal work
In 2012, Japan had 51.73 million workers, of which 33.3 million were regular employees, or seishain, according to the latest survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Contingent, or nonpermanent, workers (including part-timers, haken dispatch and shokutaku semiregular employees) numbered 18.43 million, over 35.5 percent of the workforce.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LABOR PAINS
Apr 16, 2013
Employers' 'box them in, drive them out' tactics fail legal test
Surely few employees would jump out of bed every morning, itching to start work at the 'Department for Driving Them Out'? But what is an oidashi-beya? And what scary entities are to be driven out?
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Apr 9, 2013
Japan's foreign trainee system said still plagued by rights abuses
Last month, a Chinese trainee went on a stabbing rampage at a Hiroshima Prefecture seafood company where he worked, killing the president and an employee and wounding six others.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Apr 9, 2013
Whatever happened to the Goldman Sachs union?
In February 2012, a small band of sacked workers in Japan took on one of the world's biggest investment banks, Goldman Sachs, unionizing in a bid to keep their jobs and win a better deal from a firm they believed had treated them unfairly.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LABOR PAINS
Mar 19, 2013
Labor law reform raises rather than relieves workers' worries
A new specter hangs over Japan: the specter of insecure employment. The source of this insecurity is the August 2012 reform of the Labor Contract Act related to fixed-term employment.
EDITORIALS
Feb 25, 2013
Decline of manufacturing
A labor force survey shows the number of people employed in Japan's manufacturing industry dipping below 10 million for the first time since 1961.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jan 28, 2013
Give sufficient notice when breaking an employment contract
Reader JA asks if it's legal for an employer to demand compensation if an employee quits their job partway through their contract.
EDITORIALS
Jan 22, 2013
The problem of power harassment
One in four workers in Japan experienced power harassment over the past three years, according to a recent survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. The poll of 4,580 companies with 30 or more employees, conducted between July and September of 2012, also found that 45.2 percent of the surveyed...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LABOR PAINS
Jan 22, 2013
AKB48: Unionize and take back your lost love lives
They started performing on stages in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district, and today their ubiquity is unrivaled. The current flavors of the month pepper the TV schedules and covers of weekly magazines all year round. In Tokyo, you can't swing a carrot without hitting a giant poster of one or a bunch...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jan 22, 2013
Tokyo: What do you think of AKB48's no-love-life clause?
I can understand their handlers want to keep the girls potentially available, just as I'm sure they want their stable to concentrate on their performances, not boys. It works to prevent any scandals too, while maintaining a pure image in a very Japanese way, where the puppet masters keep a very tight rein.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011
Film mines rich seams of history
Hiroko Kumagai will never forget the day in 1998 when she first stepped inside the red-brick building at the entrance to the closed and shuttered Miyahara shaft in the Miike coal mine in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture.

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’