by Sungryoung Yoon
Inequitable situations appear while the globalization is being advanced in the world. Japan is generally said to be an affluent country, but inequitable situations are also coming to Japan and I think it is a problem for which we have to find a solution. So I am going to pick up one of the inequitable situations about contract workers, in Japan and am going to write how the situation is going on compared to regular workers.
The number of contract works has been increasing since the beginning of 1990 while the number of the regular workers has been decreasing. Then don’t we have any problems about these situations between the regular workers and the contract workers? The answer would be “NO”. So I am going to talk about why the answer is “NO”.
I pick up four inequitable situations of the contract workers. Firstly, the pay style is totally different from the regular workers. The contract workers don’t have both bonus and retirement allowance, which the regular workers could get. Also the pay per unit time is much lower than the regular workers. These situation makes the other situations that they could not get to buy such a car and home by loan because of low pay. Secondly, employment is less stable compared to regular workers. Most companies employ contract workers for only 1 year to 2 years, and lay off them after that. As I said previously, they could not get the retirement allowance even if they get laid off. Thirdly, their career is not guaranteed at all too. The regular workers usually have some chances a year for advancement and then they could get higher pay and position than before. But the contract workers could get not as same as the situation the regular workers have. Finally, the contract workers don’t have social and employment insurances.
I wrote about four inequitable situations for the contract workers but the four situations are only a few examples of all problems about it. If both of them are working and doing same jobs in same company, they should get same situations with the regular workers. We usually say, the globalization brought the equal society, new society and situations but we haven’t focused on the real situations of inequality yet if we keep saying such a thing.
http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/honkawa/3240.html
http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/honkawa/3250.html
http://www.caa.go.jp/seikatsu/2001/0622kazoku-lifestyle/houkoku.pdf
JAPANsociology 