Keidanren to LDP: Foreign Trainee Workers Should be Allowed to Stay 8 Years (Sometimes, Under Special Circumstances)

October 4, 2007
By Ken Worsley

For a long time, we’ve been hearing Keidanren officials come to press conferences and say that foreign trainee should be allowed to come to Japan, train and work for three years, and then be forced to leave the country. Problems with this revolving-door style policy should be obvious to anyone with a brain. Still, it kept some conservative politicians happy, since there was always an end date on those visas: 3 years, tops.

Now, Keidanren is singing a different tune. Yesterday, Keidanren officials met with the ruling LDP’s special committee on foreign labor and asserted that “trainees should be allowed to stay in Japan for a total of eight years. Only those with recognized skills, such as chefs and pilots, will be eligible for the additional five-year stay.”

Are you pounding your head on your desk? Go ahead, it’s ok. First: Chefs? Chefs? Who are they kidding?

Japan needs doctors and nurses. People in need of care are being rejected from hospitals because they don’t have enough doctors on staff. A large hospital in Tokyo has shut its doors. Chefs? No seriously: chefs?

I can’t take either group seriously at the moment (I wasn’t taking the LDP special committee seriously to begin with).

From what I can tell, the fact that foreigners working under the trainee program are shut out of basic labor laws, minimum wages rules and other regulations was not addressed. Also, it seems that those with strong Japanese language skills will end up staying for a shorter time because they will not need the language training part of a trainee’s stay. You came over here to work with language skills? Great, go home sooner.

Ok, so who’s going to cook this breakfast?

Filed Under Business, Labor and Wages, Politics