Human Resources

November 2002

The government, corporate executives and labor unions agreed to work harder on stabilizing the nation's job security through such efforts as promoting work sharing. Participants of a meeting of the government-private sector forum on employment, held at the Prime Minister's office, included Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi, Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) Chairman Hiroshi Okuda and Kiyoshi Sasamori, president of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo). Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, and Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Takeo Hiranuma also took part in the meeting. The participants of the day's forum meeting agreed to compile a document at their meeting, to be held Dec. 4, encompassing agreements reached between the three sides. Prior to the start of discussions, Prime Minister Koizumi called Rengo chief Sasamori and Nippon Keidanren head Okuda to his office and asked the two to secure cooperation between labor and management in working on employment issues. The government is to release Japan's employment data for October. The jobless rate stayed unchanged at 5.4% for the fifth straight month in September, down just 0.1 percentage point from the postwar high registered in December last year. The government, labor and management reached a basic accord to promote work sharing at the end of March this year (November 26, Kyodo News)

The Ministry of Labor plans to call for additional funding in the planned supplementary budget for the current fiscal year to fund temporary job-creation measures to be conducted by local governments. The ministry plans to appropriate 200-300 billion　yen, which will cover activities through fiscal 2004, for creating temporary employment for an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 workers who might lose their jobs while banks accelerate efforts to dispose of nonperforming debts. Under such a program, prefectural and municipal governments will decide specific job-creation measures, which are to be carried out with the help of private companies, nonprofit and other organizations. The move is aimed at providing workers with employment for no more than six months as teaching assistants at public schools, assistants at police offices and helpers for other public services, including nursing care. The ministry also intends to budget another 100 billion yen in subsidies to support private companies' efforts to start new consumer-related services and hire middle-aged and older workers. Plans call for granting a maximum of 5 million yen each for companies hiring five or more workers to conduct such services as helping seniors with housework, accompanying young children to nurseries and kindergartens, and assisting those in going to hospitals. The ministry will seek another 100 billion yen to fund a similar program, under which a company will be eligible for a subsidy of up to 600,000 yen for hiring a worker who has lost his or her previous job as a result of banks' bad-loan disposals. The two subsidies for private companies are estimated to create more than 200,000 jobs. (November 24, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun)