40% of public childcare workers are temps

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

40% of public childcare workers are temps

The number of local government employees decreased by 13 percent (430,000) between 1994 and 2009. The number of public workers in social welfare services in particular has drastically declined.

Because of the government policy to privatize public childcare centers and replace full-time childcare workers with non-regular workers, 42.5 percent of public childcare center workers are now non-regular workers.

Under deregulation policy

Since 1998, the deregulation of childcare services under the "structural reform policy" has allowed public and private childcare centers to hire more non-regular workers. According to the data published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 89,409 childcare center staff work on a non-regular basis. They cannot receive pay raises or take paid holidays although they play an important role in both public and private childcare centers.

30-year-old Kaneko Yuri, who was a contract childcare worker living in Tokyo, said "I could only spend 10,000 yen a month on food and of course I couldn't buy any new clothes." Although she did the same work as full-time staff, she was paid less.

Kaneko also said, "Because I was so busy, I got easily provoked. I was obsessed with self-hatred. This badly affected my job." Kaneko noted that many contract staff quit their jobs because they could not have any hope of obtaining a full-time position.

Average of 6.2 % public employees reduced annually

Since the late 1990s, every local government reduced their employees under the administrative reform policy. The Koizumi government's structural reform policy accelerated this move. The number of local public workers dropped by 6.2 percent on average between 2005 and 2009.

Following in the steps of the former LDP-Komei government, the Democratic Party of Japan-led government intends to carry out further reductions in public workers and shift the national government's responsibilities to local governments and the private sector in the name of a "new concept of public service". This clearly reveals the government intention to abandon its responsibility for the public childcare program and to encourage the private sector to take an increased share of childcare for profit.

- Akahata, July 15, 2010