Looking back on the past year

The year 2002 is fast drawing to a close. In our articles last December, we wrote that Japan's unemployment rate had recorded an all-time high, and that major corporations had announced large-scale employment curtailment plans.

Let us, then, look back on this past year. The business recession still lingers. At present, the unemployment rate shows a figure corresponding to the all-time high recorded a year earlier. The situation has gone from bad to worse, with salaries and bonuses being cut, more middle aged and older individuals committing suicide, and young people having difficulties finding jobs.

As for moves in business organizations, the launch of a newly organized Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), headed by Toyota President Hiroshi Okuda, made headline news. Much bigger news, however, were the disclosures of a series of scandals in some of Japan's blue-chip companies, resulting in a number of Nippon Keidanren's Vice Presidents, elected with the aim of supporting President Okuda, resigning shortly after the inauguration of the new organization.

Eighteen months have passed since Junichiro Koizumi became Japan's Prime Minister. He pledged to reform the country's administrative, financial, and political systems; however, to the nation's disappointment, he and his Cabinet have yet to produce any tangible achievements. If more of the banks' nonperforming debts are disposed of in the coming months, it will create an even greater number of jobless people in Japan. The Government must step up its efforts to create a so-called "employment safety net." However, the variety of programs and initiatives that have been implemented with the aim of achieving this goal are far from adequate. Japan is only midway through its course to full-scale reform. The bad news is that, during this period, our country's economic stamina has become substantially weaker since the outset.

As we have already written a number of times, in line with implementation of these reforms, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has made vigorous efforts to ease regulations and to reexamine existing rules on work. The Ministry plans to submit, during the January 2003 Diet session, bills to legislate employee dismissal rules as well as bills on the expansion of the discretionary labor system, expansion of dispatched workers, and extension of the upper limit of the period for contract employment.

In addition to these issues, discussions are currently under way on the slashing of employment insurance benefits and raising of insurance premiums, to be implemented by June 2003. Management and labor disagree on all these issues, and coordinating their views is indeed a daunting task.

The Japanese people's working conditions have undergone dramatic changes in 2002. The Koizumi Administration is under pressure to implement long-awaited programs and policies next year that will produce tangible results. The Japanese work environment will undoubtedly undergo further major changes next year.