Home |  Elder Rights |  Health |  Pension Watch |  Rural Aging |  Armed Conflict |  Aging Watch at the UN  

  SEARCH SUBSCRIBE  
 

Mission  |  Contact Us  |  Internships  |    

 



back

Want to support Global Action on Aging?

Click below:

Thanks!

 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.


Copyright © 2002 Global Action on Aging
Terms of Use  |  Privacy Policy  |  Contact Us