A university senior, who applied to work for a convenience store chain, was told he would be hired as a regular staff member. He had been assured by his recruiter that he could expect take-home pay of “somewhat over ¥200,000”. Just before he reported for duty, he received a notification of employment spelling out his duties and responsibilities. The content, however, differed from what he had anticipated. First, the breakdown in wages specified a basic salary of ¥150,000, to which was added a first sales allotment of ¥20,000 and second sales allotment of ¥30,000.
Nevertheless, he went ahead with the job and found that his work hours began at 8am and ended at 10pm with only 30 minutes allotted for a rest period. Paid holidays were practically nil. Despite these long hours, after the withholdings for tax and social welfare, etc. his monthly pay cheque was never to exceed ¥176,000. Eventually he began showing signs of physical and mental fatigue and wound up resigning the position.
Yukan Fuji (18 June) reported that such cases of fraudulent hiring—in which employers engage in bait-and-switch tactics in their recruitment and hiring—have been soaring over the past several years.
“Such practices, of dangling offers of good jobs and then changing them after signing up workers, has existed in the past but, over the previous two years, we’ve seen an increase, including some being done on a large scale by major corporations”, said Harutaka Imano, business consultant and head of POSSE, a non-profit organisation supporting labour issues in Japan. Imano has authored several books, including one from publisher Gentosha Inc. that warns against the pitfalls of firms that change conditions after recruiting staff members.
According to the government’s Hello Work job locator service, in fiscal 2012 offices dealt with 7,283 cases of individual claims that job conditions differed from what had been offered at the time of recruitment. The following year the figure had risen to 9,380 and, in 2014, the number reached 12,252.
Imano believes a key factor in this rise is the current shortage of workers. So-called “black firms” typically eschew rewarding worker efforts, either in terms of promotion or compensation. In particular, more businesses appear to be exploiting newly hired workers who are unprepared to raise strong objections when the details of a job vary from the work contract they signed at the time of hiring.
An advisory panel to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has been conferring with Hello Work and recruitment businesses, and is now preparing a set of recommendations that will punish violators. Penalties include imprisonment of company executives. By autumn, a set of recommendations is expected to be proposed to the Diet in order to make revisions to the current employment law.