Deregulation of employment law after 1990 and its effects on Japanese Corporate Governance

Abstract

In this paper I would like to investigate the situation of Japanese labor market especially atypical employment (part-timer, contract employee and dispatching worker etc.) after 1990. In the first part, I would like to investigate the process of deregulation of Japanese labor market after 1990 and increase of atypical employment of Japanese enterprises as the effect of this deregulation. After the boom period with high inflation from 1885 to 1990, the bubble economy crashed at 1990 and the Heisei depression began. Many enterprises including large enterprises stopped to accept new college graduates as employee. But they wished to accept rather atypical workers. The deregulation of labor market was carried out in 1990er under the effect of the globalization in this period. The enterprises of the manufacturing industries wished to cut down the productive costs of their companies from the pressure of international competition of other countries, which can use cheaper wages. And further the neo-liberalism stream influenced on Japanese enterprises and politicians. The Japanese government under the Prime Minister Koizumi and the financial minister Takenaka tried to deregulate economic regulations such as employment laws. And from this deregulation, atypical employment increased not only in special sectors but also in ordinary manufacture. In the second part, I would like to investigate the effect of the world financial crisis upon the atypical employment after 2008, namely drastic increase of employment losses of atypical employment with short social safety nets. As the increase of atypical employment in this period was too rapid and the social safety net for this atypical employment was not sufficiently equipped, many atypical employee have lost their work for example in automobile industry and electric industry from September,2008 and as consequence their situation became worse. In the third part, I would like to investigate how Japanese corporate governance has changed from the impact of increasing of atypical employee.