Changing Patterns of Employment in Japan: Employee Transfers in the Private Sector

Abstract

Patterns of employment in Japan's large enterprises have undergone significant adjustment since the early 1980s. An ongoing and accelerating transformation is under way, where once the basis of regular employment was the recruitment of graduates, career-long identification in the enterprise and security in its stable internal labour market. The process reflects a Just In Time approach to managing human resources, which is designed to have 'the right workers, in the right quantity, in the right place and at the right time'. The approach is exemplified in Japan's private sector, although it is not confined to that sector; nor is it unique to Japan. This paper examines one of a variety of Just In Time strategies: the transfer of regular employees out of the firm that originally employed them. The study relies on the limited amount of English language literature on the phenomenon and the analysis also draws on recent research in Japan. It is argued that regular employees who are sent out by their employer to work under the total control of a third party are a special type of non-regular labour. It is also argued that the transferring practice, together with an increasing proportion of non-regular em ployment relationships, has significant implications for Japan's internal labour market structures and its enterprise-based unionism. The implications are relevant for industrial societies undergoing restructuring and for those rethinking their industrial relations situation.