Temporary worker - Rinjiko

Japanese: 臨時工 - りんじこう

Unlike permanent workers (regular workers with permanent employment), temporary workers are employed under short-term labor contracts and are primarily engaged in the manufacturing process. In reality, they are not always employed for short-term temporary work, and there are many cases where they work for long periods of time by repeatedly renewing their contracts. They are so-called permanent workers under the name of temporary employment. The working conditions of temporary workers, such as wages and benefits, are lower than those of permanent workers, which plays a role in lowering the working conditions of all workers, and they were the main type of unstable employment workers who were easily fired depending on the fluctuations in labor demand at companies. Since Japanese labor unions are company-based unions centered on regular workers, temporary workers are usually left unorganized. These characteristics are common to outside workers and modern dispatched workers, but they are distinguished from outside workers in that temporary workers have a direct employment relationship with the company where they work.

[Goga Kazumichi]

History

The origins of temporary workers in Japan date back to the period when industrial capitalism was established after the Meiji Restoration. At that time, light industries, especially the textile industry, employed young female workers from small farming families, while heavy industries such as the munitions sector, steel, and shipbuilding employed laborers and day laborers under the control of labor suppliers as temporary workers in unskilled labor fields, and these were increased or fired according to economic fluctuations. From the period after World War I until the Showa Depression, companies began to assign temporary workers to the same tasks as regular workers, and to employ them for fairly long periods by renewing their short-term employment contracts. However, wages and working conditions remained poor.

Furthermore, unorganized temporary workers were used as a means to suppress or undermine the rising labor movement of the time. According to a December 1934 survey on temporary workers and laborers by the Ministry of Home Affairs' Social Affairs Bureau, 30% of private factories employing 100 or more workers employed temporary workers, totaling 80,000, but the actual number across all factories is estimated at 300,000. According to the same survey by the Ministry of Home Affairs, at the Yahata Steel Works, there were 11,276 temporary workers and laborers compared to 16,661 regular workers. At the time, there were incidents where companies refused to pay advance notice allowances to temporary workers when they were fired (for example, the dispute at the Nagoya Works of Mitsubishi Aircraft Co., Ltd. in September 1933), and the issue of temporary workers became a social problem. During the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, the military demand economy led to labor shortages, especially in heavy industry, and temporary workers were absorbed into the wartime forced labor system (conscription system).

[Goga Kazumichi]

Post-World War II developments

After World War II, during the Korean War, temporary workers were used in large numbers instead of outside workers, and they became the main method of employment adjustment for companies until the end of the 1950s. The background to this was that the Employment Security Law (1947), which was enacted during the process of "democratization" after the war, prohibited the labor supply business (outside worker system). From the late 1950s onwards, a period of high economic growth began, and large companies promoted technological innovation and built new modern factories and facilities, but while new hiring of regular workers was suppressed as much as possible, temporary workers and day laborers accounted for a significant proportion of new hires. For example, according to the "Labor Transfer Survey" by the Ministry of Labor (now the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare), the proportion of temporary workers among new employees in 1959 was 49.9% for manufacturing companies with 500 or more employees, and reached 61.5% in the metal machinery sector. However, as the struggle to turn temporary workers into regular workers intensified, the amendment to the Enforcement Regulations of the Employment Security Law (1952) relaxed the certification standards for labor supply businesses, leading to active use of the outside worker system, and temporary workers gradually began to be replaced by outside workers. In 1961, 92.1% of regular manufacturing workers were "regular workers with regular employment titles," while only 7.9% were "regular workers with temporary day labor titles" (Ministry of Labor, "1961 Labor White Paper").

If we look at temporary employment broadly, not just temporary workers engaged in manufacturing processes, their numbers continued to increase throughout the period of high economic growth. According to the Basic Survey on Employment Structure conducted by the Statistics Bureau of the former Prime Minister's Office (now the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is responsible for the survey), the number of temporary employees (those employed under employment contracts lasting from one month to one year) was 960,000 in 1956 and 965,000 in 1962, remaining in the 900,000 range until the mid-1960s, but rose sharply from the second half of the 1960s, reaching 1,484,000 in 1968 and 1,568,000 in 1971. After the recession of 1974-1975, large companies made employment adjustments to reduce or curtail the number of regular workers who were essential to the company's production and sales activities, and instead introduced non-regular workers such as temporary workers, day laborers, part-timers, and outside workers. As a result, temporary employment increased rapidly after 1974, and according to the survey mentioned above, the number fluctuated from 1.91 million in 1974 to 2.205 million in 1977 and 3.335 million in 1982.

Furthermore, in the 1990s, this trend became even more pronounced amid the prolonged recession, with the number of temporary workers increasing to 5.034 million in 1997 and 6.031 million in 2007. At the same time, the number of day laborers (those employed daily or under employment contracts of less than one month) was 1.452 million and 1.356 million, respectively. According to the census, the number of temporary workers in the manufacturing process (temporary workers in the occupational classification "manufacturing and production workers"), which originally meant temporary workers, was 1.024 million in 2000 and 1.084 million in 2005. The definition of "temporary workers" in the census differs from that in the "Basic Survey on Employment Structure," as "people employed daily or for a fixed period of one year or less."

Since the beginning of the 21st century, indirectly employed dispatched and contract workers have been introduced to production lines in the automobile and electrical machinery sectors, but most of them are temporary workers with employment contracts limited to a few months. Fixed-term workers in the automobile industry are also a type of temporary worker.

[Goga Kazumichi]

"Temporary Workers" by Mitsuro Minemura (1952, Yoshobo)" ▽ "Temporary Workers, vol. 1 and 2, edited by the Hokkaido Prefectural Institute of Labor Science (1955, 1956, Nippon Hyoron Shinsha)" ▽ "Automobile Factory of Despair" by Satoshi Kamata (1983, Kodansha)"

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

Japanese:

本工労働者（常用雇用の正規労働者）と異なり、短期の労働契約で雇用されている主として製造工程に従事している労働者をいう。現実には臨時の作業に短期間雇用されるとは限らず、契約の更新を重ねることにより長期間にわたり就労する例がしばしばみられた。いわゆる臨時雇名義の常用労働者である。臨時工の賃金や福利厚生などの労働条件は本工と比べ一段と低く、労働者全体の労働条件を引き下げる役割を果たすとともに、企業の労働力需要の変動に応じて解雇されやすい不安定就業労働者の主要な形態であった。日本の労働組合は正規労働者中心の企業別組合であるため、臨時工は通例、未組織のままに置かれていることが多い。こうした特徴は社外工や現代の派遣労働者にも共通しているが、臨時工が就労先企業との間に直接的雇用関係を有している点で社外工と区別される。

［伍賀一道］

沿革

日本の臨時工の起源は明治維新後の産業資本主義確立期にまでさかのぼる。当時、繊維工業を中心とする軽工業においては零細農家出身の若年女工を採用したが、軍需部門や鉄鋼、造船などの重工業部門では不熟練労働分野に労働者供給業者の支配下にある人夫、寄場(よせば)人足を臨時職工として採用し、景気の変動に応じて増大あるいは解雇した。第一次世界大戦後から昭和恐慌に至る時期になると、企業は臨時工に本工労働者と同様の職務に従事させ、短期の雇用契約を更新することにより相当長期にわたって雇用するようになった。しかし賃金・労働条件は依然劣悪なままに放置されていた。

　さらに未組織労働者である臨時工は、当時の労働運動の高揚に対してそれを弾圧ないし切り崩す手段として利用された。1934年（昭和9）12月の内務省社会局の「臨時職工及(および)人夫に関する調査」によれば、使用職工数100人以上の民間工場のうち30％が臨時職工および人夫を使用し、その合計は8万人に上るとされているが、実際には全工場を通じて30万人と推定されている。内務省の同調査によれば、八幡(やはた)製鉄所では本工1万6661人に対し臨時工および人夫は1万1276人に達している。当時、臨時工の解雇に際し会社が予告手当の支払いを拒否するなどの事件が発生（たとえば1933年9月の三菱(みつびし)航空機株式会社名古屋製作所争議）、臨時工問題は社会問題化した。日中戦争、太平洋戦争中は軍需経済のもとで重工業を中心に労働力不足現象が生じ、臨時工は戦時強制労働体制（徴用制）のなかに吸収された。

［伍賀一道］

第二次世界大戦後の動向

第二次世界大戦後、朝鮮戦争の時期に社外工にかわって臨時工が大量に利用され、1950年代末まで企業の雇用調整の主要な手段となった。この背景には、戦後「民主化」の過程で定められた職業安定法（1947）により労働者供給事業（社外工制度）が禁止された点がある。1950年代後半以降高度成長期を迎え、大企業では技術革新を進め、近代的工場や設備が新設されたが、本工の新規採用は極力抑制されたのに対し、臨時工や日雇が新規採用のなかでかなりの比重を占めた。たとえば労働省（現厚生労働省）の「労働異動調査」によると、1959年の新規入職者のうち臨時工の占める割合は、製造業500人以上規模の企業の場合で49.9％に、なかでも金属機械部門では61.5％に達した。しかし、臨時工による本工化闘争が活発化するとともに、職業安定法施行規則の改正（1952）により、労働者供給事業の認定基準が緩和されたため社外工制度が積極的に利用されるようになり、しだいに臨時工は社外工にとってかわられるようになった。1961年当時の製造業常用労働者のうち「常用名義の常用労働者」が92.1％であるのに対し、「臨時日雇名義の常用労働者」は7.9％である（労働省『昭和36年労働白書』）。

　製造工程に従事する臨時工に限定しないで、広く臨時雇についてみれば、高度成長期を通してその数は増大し続けた。旧総理府統計局（現在は総務省統計局が調査を所管）「就業構造基本調査」によれば、臨時雇（1か月以上1年以内の雇用契約で雇われている者）は1956年96万人、1962年96.5万人と、1960年代なかばまでは90万人台で推移していたが、1960年代後半より急増し、1968年148.4万人、1971年156.8万人となった。1974～1975年の不況以後、大企業は雇用調整によって、企業の生産・営業活動にとって必要不可欠な常用労働者を削減または抑制し、そのかわりに臨時雇、日雇、パートタイマー、社外工などの非正規労働者を導入するようになった。その結果、臨時雇は1974年以降、急速に増大し、前記調査によれば、1974年191.0万人、1977年220.5万人、1982年333.5万人と推移した。

　さらに、1990年代に入ると長期不況のもとでこの傾向はよりいっそう顕著になっており、1997年（平成9）には臨時雇は503.4万人に、2007年には603.1万人にまで増加した。なお、同時点で日雇（日々または1か月未満の雇用契約で雇われている者）はそれぞれ145.2万人、135.6万人であった。国勢調査によれば、本来の臨時工を意味する製造工程の臨時雇労働者（職業中分類「製造・制作作業者」の臨時雇）は2000年に102.4万人、2005年に108.4万人である。なお、国勢調査の「臨時雇」の定義は「就業構造基本調査」とは異なり「日々または1年以内の期間を定めて雇用されている人」である。

　21世紀に入る前後より、自動車や電機部門などの製造ラインには間接雇用の派遣労働者や請負労働者が導入されているが、その多くは雇用契約期間が数か月に限られている臨時雇である。自動車産業などの期間工も臨時工の一種である。

［伍賀一道］

『峯村光郎著『臨時工』（1952・要書房）』▽『北海道立労働科学研究所編『臨時工』上下（1955、1956・日本評論新社）』▽『鎌田慧著『自動車絶望工場』（1983・講談社）』