Simon Scott: Freedom to work three jobs with no future

Japan's answer to hard times has left young people scrambling to find careers. Photo / Getty Images

The Japanese like to give topsy-turvy Japanese-English names to youth phenomena.

There is the yankee, or young male trouble-maker. There's the ko-gyaru, the rebellious high school girl with dyed blond hair, loose socks, heavy make-up and modified school uniform.

Layabout single 20-somethings sponging off their parents have earned the name parasaito shinguru or parasite single.

And there is the freeter, or furita, a combination of the word "free" and the German "arbeiter" or worker, which identifies a young person whose primary income is through casual, contract, or part-time work.

Four or five years ago, if you asked young Japanese what they did for a living, they might say with studied nonchalance, "Furita da yo" (I'm a freeter).

There was almost an understated kind of pride about being a "freeter." Once it was cool to reject the great "Japanese Dream" of their parent's generation to work for a big Japan Inc. company.

That kind of response is rare now.

Many still say that they are casual workers or between jobs, but the sense of being part of a lifestyle seems to be largely gone.

Being a freeter in 2010 is no longer a lifestyle choice. It is the default option into which an increasingly large number of young Japanese are being forced.

There are fewer full-time jobs, and competition for them is fierce.

Keisuke Ito has to work three part-time jobs to afford his one-room apartment in west Tokyo.

The 28-year-old is a waiter at a restaurant, a night cleaner at a department store and a video store clerk.

Ito likes the variety of three different jobs and the flexibility of the working hours, but says that despite usually working 40 to 50 hours a week he cannot save.

"Low wages and the high cost of living in Tokyo mean I have to work three jobs just to have enough to afford to live.

"If I want to take a holiday I don't get paid, so I can't afford to take time off. Also, I worry that it will upset the boss - there are so many young people now looking for work."

The Government's labour force survey shows the number of non-regular workers increased from 15 to 33 per cent of the workforce between 1984 and last year.

This increase in non-regular workers has left about 20 million Japanese living without the security of full-time employment.

Professor Jeff Kingston of Tokyo's Temple University, said the expansion in non-regular workers is a product of two decades of corporate cost cutting, coupled with ageing baby boomers who are becoming increasingly expensive because of Japan's seniority wage system.

Rather than weeding out costlier workers and engaging in across the board lay-offs like their Western counterparts, Japanese corporations have tried to protect core employees.

"Given how bad things were for corporate Japan during the past two decades, it is amazing how few workers were fired or laid off," Kingston said.

He puts this down to Japanese corporate ideology which has traditionally stressed lifetime employment and seniority wages.

"I believe they felt they owed these people.

"But they needed to fund that and it came at the cost of young workers," he said.

The Government also began deregulating the labour market in the late 1990s, a process which led to the erosion of labour protections available to workers and made it easier for companies to hire temporary contractors through dispatch companies.

"The main problem is that there are very important incentives for employers to hire non-regular workers - wages and benefits are low, there is no need for the employer to contribute to medical care insurance or national pension schemes, and such workers can be fired virtually at will," Kingston said.

Regular full-time workers remain well protected under Japan's labour laws and the courts often find in favour of the dismissed worker.

Kingston says this "dual labour market" is creating widening income disparities and turning Japan into a society of "haves" and "have-nots".

The professor of economics at Tokyo's International Christian University, Naohiro Yashiro, believes the solution is to remove the distinction between regular and non-regular workers.

"The current system is quite unfair," he says. "The protection of regular workers should be decreased and protection of non-regular workers should be increased so they are equal."

Yashiro believes Japan's labour standards laws are not only too rigid and ambiguous, but are out of date and thus fall short of their intentions.

For example, it is prohibited for companies to give cash payouts to workers for unused paid holidays.

"In the case of both regular and non-regular, they cannot cash-out," Yashiro said.

He says the law was designed to protect workers' health in a society notorious for overwork by making them take holidays, but the result is that workers still don't use the holidays owed to them and don't get paid for them either.

These imbalances in Japan's labour regulations and corporate hiring practices exacerbate the widening gap between the living standards of regular workers and their non-regular counterparts.

Kingston believes this growing inequality is creating what the Japanese refer to this as the "kakusa shakai" - the society of disparities .

"I think perhaps it may not be a peaceful, harmonious and cohesive society as it is been in the past. Our image of Japan and the reality are different - there is a growing gap."