- At its 381st meeting, on March 11, 1999, the Central Employment Security Council (Chairman: Prof. Shunsaku Nishikawa of Shumei University) endorsed a draft recommendation on the legal system regulating placement services, written by the council's subcommittee on private-sector demands, following deliberations in a total of 14 sessions held since December 1998. The council subsequently submitted its recommendations to Labor Minister Akira Amari.
- The latest recommendation on the legal system regulating placement services deals with the conditions and requirements necessary for strengthening responses of labor supply and demand in response to changes in Japan's industrial structure and diversifying employment structure, as well as for conformity with the new framework of international standards in the form of the International Labor Organization's Convention No. 181 (Convention on Private Employment Agencies) adopted at the ILO's annual session in June 1997.
- The subcommittee's report seeks to revamp common labor market rules in the private and public sectors in the area of adjustments of labor supply and demand, and also to legally clarify rules for the protection of workers, such as measures to protect personal information on individual workers, which were not necessarily made clear under the Employment Security Law. The report also calls for the expansion and strengthening of the functions of the national government and public employment security organizations as social safety nets, while urging public employment security organizations to ensure the implementation of labor market rules. With regard to fee-charging placement services, it propose the deregulation of occupations which can be handled by these services under an approval system, from the standpoint of promoting Japan's accession to ILO Convention No. 181.
- RENGO advocates a drastic review and revision of the Employment Security Law, on the grounds that the existing law is not necessarily fully responsive to the needs of adjustments of labor supply and demand amid the ongoing changes in the nation's industrial structure and diversifying patterns of employment, and that rules on the protection of workers no longer function satisfactorily.
Given this background, RENGO, with some reservations regarding the thoroughness and effectiveness of the recommended measures for the protection of workers' rights, commends the subcommittee's report for providing a legal clarification of measures such as the prohibition of and penalties against leaking personal information, and also for recommending the expansion and strengthening of the functions of public employment security organizations as a public infrastructure for safeguarding the right to work and the free choice of employment for Japanese people.
With regard to fee-charging placement services, the report propose the deregulation, in principle, of the occupations which can be handled by these services under an approval system. RENGO accepts this proposal as unavoidable, since it has been proposed with a view to Japan's ratification of ILO Convention No. 181, which has been adopted as a new international standard, and in addition has been made in tandem with the stipulation of better rules for the protection of workers.
- It now seems certain that the Labor Ministry will submit a bill for revision of the Employment Security Law to the 145th ordinary session of the Diet, which is now underway, after fulfilling such administrative procedures as seeking the council' advice on an outline of the bill to be drafted in line with the proposal.
RENGO, by deepening our collaboration with political parties through relationships of support and cooperation, will urge the adoption of legislative measures to ensure the steady implementation of the newly stipulated rules. We will also step up our campaign to realize the changes we have been seeking in the proposed review of the Labor Dispatch Law, which for over a decade has largely neglected measures to protect temporary workers.
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