TOKYO, Feb. 9, 2024—In a policy shift from homogeneity to multi-racism, Japan Feb. 9 adopted a policy of proactively welcoming foreign labor by repealing the current system of locking foreign workers in a particular industry to ‘train and teach’ them special skills for low pays in workplaces suffering labor shortages, the system that workers complain about limited freedom and possible abuse.
The policy change to ‘symbiotic labor’ from the existing ‘techno training’ program that the cabinet ministers meeting today rubber-stamped seeks to secure foreign workers in less restrictive conditions than the current system that effectively exploits foreign labor for low pays in prison-like work environs, resulting in escaping workers and human rights abuses. Employer organization, led by the powerful lobby Nippon Keidanren, has been asking for overhauling the current system over the past decade.
In recent years, other countries, including emerging Asia, have been recruiting skilled and unskilled foreign workers as they ratchet up the global wealth ladder by elevating their socio-economic well-being with digitalization and cheap labor. Taiwan, for one, actively invites Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnamese and other Asian nationalities. Thailand, Indonesia and other relatively wealthy Asian economies are accepting Laotian, Cambodian, Myanmar and other workers.
This is resulting is competition of securing both skilled and unskilled workers across Asia and elsewhere, making the current Japanese train and teach method less attractive even for economically struggling countries – the reason for the necessity of its reform.
In the planned new program, a foreign national who basically has worked for two years in one workplace can change jobs and work locations, on condition that a special work skilled learned during the two years can be used in the new workplace. And those who can demonstrate sufficient Japanese language skills would quality for permanent residency.
Many unanswered questions remain, though, e.g., what kind of work conditions a foreign worker would be exposed during the first two years, including pays, health insurance and other social welfare services, as well as how foreign workers can develop and maintain friendly living conditions with Japanese.
In Warabi City, Saitama, a suburb northwest of Tokyo with the population of 67,100, foreign residents account for 12 percent, many of Kurds. Last year, the city’s general hospital was surrounded by rival Kurd groups over an incident that to date has yet to be known. Riot police mobilized and the Japanese media reported it as ‘a riot,’ sending shudders to local Japanese residents and planting a biased image to them about foreigners. The brief tension that swept through the city clearly was caused by a lack of information and communications between the Japanese and foreign residents. It’s the kind of things that need to be addressed under the new program.
As of 2023, foreign residents in Japan totaled about 3.2 million, or about 2.6 percent of the Japanese population of 125 million, the ratio whose curve has been steepening over the last two decades in an inverted graph relationship with the tumbling overall Japanese population arising from rapid aging.
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