Re-evaluating Labor from the Field: Interview with ACW2's Midori Ito

-Please tell us about the current employment situation for young people in Japan.

The employment situation for young people has certainly become increasingly difficult over the past 20 years since the collapse of the bubble economy in Japan. Unlike the 1970s and 80s, when young people were nurtured in the workplace, the youth of today are pressured by self responsibility and expected to be skilled and work-ready. Changes can also be observed in the forms of employment. According to the "Labor Power Survey" of the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 15-24 year-old men and women accounted for 20 percent of those in non-regular, low-paid, insecure jobs in the 1990s, but this has increased to 50 percent today. For both men and women, early job changing or juggling multiple jobs has become quite normal. Yet little prospect for change can be seen in the long working hours of regular employees. Almost 30 percent of male workers aged 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 now work over 60 hours a week, which places them at risk of death from overwork. Moreover, in recent years, increasing numbers of women are working dangerously long hours as well.

The allocation of time in the daily life of single men and women has been relatively similar, but in a society characterized by the sexual division of labor, labor standards are based on the work styles of men who are free from the responsibility for housework or childcare.
Although the employment statistics for women have increased since the 1970s with the growing trend for late marriages, 70 percent of women still leave their jobs for childbirth or childrearing. This is because it is difficult for women to continue working like men while shouldering the responsibility for housework and childcare. For women to work as equals alongside men and to secure personal time for their family or hobbies, they should not have to work just like men. Rather, we need to start changing the current image of the model worker.

-Do you have any advice for the youth of today?

I propose that we have "shorter working hours and richer lives." Personally, I think that working six hours a day, four days a week would allow me the time and space to enjoy life. To achieve this, I suggest that we "polish the rusty three rights of labor." Under Article 28 of the constitution, there are three so-called basic labor rights: the right to organize (the right to form and join labor unions so that employees can negotiate at the same level as employers), the right to collective bargaining (the right to enter into collective agreements through negotiations with employers), and the right to collective action (the right to participate in strikes to further negotiations with employers). However, these three labor rights have become "rusty," as they are not utilized effectively today.

Labor unions have traditionally represented the interests of male employees in large corporations. Similarly, workers have hitherto mainly been divided and contrasted according to various distinctions such as sex, age, and employment type. However, we cannot begin to resolve the problems of the current employment situation unless we transcend these divisions. We must come together as workers united in our need to earn a living if we are to build up a force strong enough to resist capital. United in this way, we can resist the logic of capital and start making full use of the three basic labor rights by adopting a new perspective that does not create divisions among us as workers. What we must do now is to polish up these three rusty labor rights and put them into practice in our own ways.