Wanted:
People over 60
The Asahi Shimbun
January 6, 2003
New thinking is needed to tackle the job problem.
One morning two years ago, residents in Nakatsugawa, a city in a
mountainous
area in the central Japanese prefecture of Gifu, found an unusual
insert in
their newspapers. ``Help Wanted: Motivated people aged 60 or older.
Work days: Saturdays, Sundays, national holidays,'' said the ad.
Apparently,
Kato Seisakusho, a local company manufacturing parts for home
electric
appliances, was recruiting part-time workers.
More than 50 people applied for the 800-plus-yen-per-hour job. The
company
hired 15 of them, five more than it had planned. The average age of
the
newly employed part-timers was 65.
Kato Seisakusho, a typical small parts maker with less than 100
employees,
was struggling to survive a fierce price war amid the prolonged
recession.
For the firm, hiring part-time workers to operate its factory on
Saturdays
and Sundays was a desperate move to pull itself out of the
predicament.
``If we work our machines throughout the year, we can recoup our
investment
more quickly, and at low labor costs too, we thought,'' says Keiji
Kato, a
41-year-old executive at the company.
The question was what kind of workers they should hire. The answer
came from
one of Kato's acquaintances, an assistant professor at a university
who told
him there were many older people who want to work.
```That's it,' I
thought
to myself,'' recalls Kato.
It has turned out to be a good idea. The increase in sales due to
the
operation of the factory on holidays has been far greater than
expected.
``We are making profits thanks to the scheme,'' Kato says. ``That is
a
result of tapping highly motivated older workers.'' Through a
similar
help-wanted ad three months ago, the company has now hired seven
more
workers over 60.
On a recent Sunday, a 68-year-old woman was assembling components at
the
factory. ``I can earn money to spend on my hobbies and give my
grandchildren
some allowance, '' the woman said cheerfully.
Two men, 65 and 68 years old, said they were very happy about their
part-time jobs at the factory and didn't mind working on Sundays
because
``Everyday is Sunday'' for pensioners like them.
At the moment, the recession-bound Japanese economy has some surplus
labor.
But the rapid aging of the population amid extremely low birth rates
will
change the situation quickly. Twelve years from now, people aged 65
or older
will constitute a quarter of the nation's population, and there will
be a
serious shortage of young workers. As the number of workers
supporting
elderly dependents falls rapidly, the burden of sustaining the
pension
system will become unbearable. But things will be quite different if
more
old people start working.
Kato Seisakusho has risen to the tough challenge of expanding its
workforce
while increasing profits through a kind of work-sharing program in
which old
and young employees work on different days of the week. This is an
example
of a successful work-sharing scheme that may be instructive to other
companies.
How to create jobs for young people, of course, is also a very
urgent
question. High school students are having a hard time trying to find
jobs
after graduation, with the proportion of senior high schoolers with
job
offers at record lows. Job mismatching, or differences in the
demands of
employers and the desires of job seekers, is compounding the
problem, making
it even more difficult for young people to find jobs.
In an effort to improve the situation, a growing number of companies
are
offering internship or trial employment programs. Local governments
are also
adopting work-sharing plans in which the overtime hours of full-time
employees is cut to make room for new temporary staff. There is,
however, no
magic formula for lowering unemployment significantly.
Efforts need
to be
made in all sectors of the economy to create jobs.
Mie Prefecture in central Japan is hiring workers on a temporary
basis for
work on the environmental protection of forests at the head of a
river.
It is a green job-creation program financed by the central
government's
employment-promotion subsidies. Of the 53 workers the prefecture
employed
last year under this program, 12 are below 30.
Forestry jobs have traditionally been taken mostly by workers of
middle age
and older. Despite the tough employment situation, it was surprising
to the
prefecture that so many young people applied for the jobs. They were
unexpectedly eager to work with nature.
There are still many ways to create new jobs in Japan that are
waiting to be
discovered. Discarding preconceived notions and new thinking is
needed to
find them.
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