Beschäftigungswandel in Japan am Beispiel von Leiharbeit
Final Report Abstract
Temporary agency employment is a new non-standard form of employment threatening to weaken employment security by driving down wages and evading regulation of working conditions. Japan and Germany share a long legacy of prohibiting temporary agency employment, but the entry of multinational firms in the late 1960s in both countries forced legislators to replace prohibitions with the active regulation of the industry. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s in both countries, these regulations were weakened. At the turn of the 21st century, in the wake of changes in ILO regulations, the temporary help employment form was almost completely deregulated in both countries. The role of the social partners in the process of deregulation however, has played out quite differently in Japan and Germany, with strong effects on the expansion of the industry in Japan versus the much slower growth of the temporary employment form in Germany. In Japan and Germany, changes in the role of the social partners in employment policy formation underlie the deregulation of temporary agency employment. These changes however, were far more fundamental in Japan, where an exponential expansion of the temporary help industry has resulted. The basis of this change was a shift in policy making from the ministerial advisory committees to the cabinet-level deregulation commission, where labour was not represented, and where the association of small- and medium-size firms, rather than the traditional employers' representation, dominated. In Germany, the shift from the Alliance for Jobs to the Hartz commission was less meaningful, while the "back-up" influence of influencing the parliamentary legislative process through allied political parties enabled an indirect role for the social partners. In both cases, the state played a stronger role in (de-) regulation than the social partners, but in the German case, the state handed back a role to the social partners through the collective bargaining of temporary help wages and working conditions. These tensions between the state and the social partners remain in Germany however, with the rise of low-wage work in the temporary help industry and current debates over the legislation of a minimum wage in light of the relative failure of collective bargaining to regulate the industry. In Japan the deregulation of the industry increasingly means the replacement of regular with temporary workers, and the association of temporary help with precarious employment, issues also taken up by the state, but as yet without a resolution. The documented employment changes in Japan are associated with another fundamental change in employment institutions - the decline in inter-firm exchanges of employees and the expansion of a market for external labour in the form of temporary agency help. These changes are part of the declining relevance of inter-firm keiretsu ties in the Japanese economy, and the transition to more market-oriented forms of labour markets and inter-firm relations. Temporary help firms are proving to be highly strategic and innovative in this context, engaging in practices not usually associated with temporary agencies, such as the placement of highly qualified and specialised personnel as well as restructuring and outsourcing services for older and less-skilled work. The research involved detailed policy formation analysis, secondary analysis of official labour statistics and in Japan, the design and implementation of a firm survey among temporary help firms.
Publications
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2002. Stability and Change in Japanese Employment Institutions: The Case of Temporary Work. In: ASIEN, Nr. 84, Juli, S. 21 - 30
Shire, Karen A.
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2003. Die Regulierung der Zeitarbeit in Deutschland: Vom Sonderfall zur Normalbranche. Duisburger Beiträge zur soziologischen Forschung, no. 5/2003
Vitols, Katrin
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2004. Der Beitrag der Analyse der Regulierung der Zeitarbeit zur Steuerung des deutschen Arbeitsmarktes. Duisburger Beiträge zur Soziologischen Forschung, no. 8/2004
Vitols, Katrin
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2004. Reforming the German Labour Market: The Case of Temporary Agency Work. In: Competition & Change, vol. 8, no. 4, December, pp. 375 - 389
Vitols, Katrin
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2004. The Rise of Temporary Employment in Japan: Legalization and Expansion of a Non-Regular Employment Form. Duisburger Arbeitspapiere Ostasienwissenschaften, no. 62/2004
Imai, Jun
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2006. Employment Deregulation and the Expanding Market for Temporary Labour in Japan. In: Haak, Rene (ed.) The Changing Structure of Labour in Japan: Japanese Human Resource Management: between Continuity and Innovation. Houndmills: palgrave Macmillan, pp. 78 - 89
Imai, Jun and Shire, Karen
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2007. Understanding Employment Systems from a Gender Perspective. ZeS Arbeitspapier Nr. 5/2007, 39 pages
Shire, Karen and Gottschall, Karin
