March 31, 2000

Kiyoshi SASAMORI
General Secretary
Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC-RENGO)

The number of the unemployed is 3.27 million people with the increase by 140,000 people compared with February of the previous year. In particular, the number of those who have become non-voluntarily unemployed by reason of cutting the number of employees is 1.15million, which has been increased by 190,000 people form February, 1999. This shows the seriousness of the current employment situation.

The number of the non-voluntary unemployed that had been decreased to the level of 900,000 since last September becomes the second highest next to the peak, which was 1.18 million. This is where the difficulty lies. Above all, the job offer rate for those older than the age 45 is 0.11 to 0.38. This rate is extremely low with 660,000 unemployed, which shares 60% of total workforce of this age category.

This is because recession-led bankruptcies have been increasingly occurring prior to the beginning of the new fiscal year due to the difficulty in financing and also because the companies have been proceeding with the preparation of their fundamentals. In addition, the unemployed newly graduates since April will certainly worsen the unemployment rate. The job offer seems slightly better compared with the previous month though the rate of job offers in February is 0.52. However, this level has been low in long standing and the non-labour population including those who have given up looking for a job has been increasing. Therefore, easy optimism should not be acceptable.

The government circles predict with expectation that the economy will pick up since the beginning of this year. But taking the state into consideration, it is very serious because the spread of employment insecurity and increase in unemployment may prevent public consumption picking up and the recovering economy may receive a bad influence.

The government should face these matters seriously. It should hold a meeting of the Tripartite Employment Conference without the delay in the view of taking the following measures as urgent employment measures:

1. Taking immediate and concrete job creation measures and realizing the one million job creation proposed by RENGO and Nikkeiren
   The government should follow-up the measures taken to create temporary jobs and review new business developments, in particular by supporting job creation policies of local governments with necessary financing.
2. Putting the brakes to the restructuring accompanied personnel cuts
   The governments should request the enterprises to fully take their responsibilities by making efforts in training/retraining and relocating their employees and to extend the limit of newly recruited employee.
3. Establishing employment safety nets
   The government should enact a law protecting workers on the occasion of transferring the management on the earliest date. It should improve the finance of employment insurance to cope with the rapid increase in pension recipients and prolonged period of the unemployment. In particular, it should size up temporary staff and trainers in education/training services and subsidize related activities by the business circles and communities, in the view of stabilizing the employment of small and medium enterprises.
4. Improving measures for new graduates
   The governments should start the career development education for the new graduates and expand/improve training system of the enterprises.
5. Improving loan business for small and medium enterprises
   The government should expand the loan of the government financial institutions and the special guaranteeing system of the Credit Guarantee Association.

RENGO will make its best effort to start "RENGO Hello Work, " a RENGO-initiated employment agency at the earliest stage.