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The story
As labor shortages worsen under the “2024 Problem” — new overtime caps on truck drivers — the logistics industry is expanding its hiring of foreign drivers now that trucking has been added to the “Specified Skilled Worker (Type 1)” visa category. In a 5ch thread reacting to a Yomiuri Shimbun article, commenters lined up to criticize the industry’s long-neglected low-wage structure and point out the shortage of long-haul drivers. Opinions were split, meanwhile, over how far self-driving technology could eventually fill the gap.
10/11 (Sun) 15:01 JST
Yomiuri Shimbun Online
The logistics industry is increasingly hiring foreign drivers, spurred by the addition of trucking to the “Specified Skilled Worker (Type 1)” visa category. The move is expected to help ease the worsening labor shortage since stricter overtime regulations for truck drivers took effect under the so-called “2024 Problem,” though building the safety infrastructure needed to support it remains a challenge. (By Kentaro Otsuka)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Eventually you'll get companies where the owner is foreign and the whole fleet of drivers is foreign too.
That's just the last-mile stuff, there's plenty of people for that. What's actually short is long-haul drivers.
I'll pay the shipping surcharge, just raise long-haul drivers' wages already.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HStYf2-XIAA6AmX.jpg
But then people complain when shipping fees go up, right?
Wages have already gone up plenty and people still aren't showing up. There just aren't enough bodies, period.
Raising wages that much would hurt the business.
Foreign workers show up before wages ever climb high enough to attract Japanese workers.
So companies hire the foreigners.
Japanese workers can't get in.
More Japanese people end up resenting foreigners.
Basically, every time a job becomes one foreigners can fill, there's less room left for Japanese workers — and all that builds up is hatred toward foreigners.
On highways, if they actually committed to it, self-driving should be doable — no pedestrians or traffic lights to worry about.
Have they actually solved the problem where rain and fallen leaves throw the sensors off?
Self-driving for highways only would be easy enough to make practical, but the question is where you hand off to a human driver. There are only so many spots where you can park a massive truck, and even now, parking areas at night are already packed solid with trucks with nowhere left to go.
Not gonna happen in Japan. Fatal accidents from human drivers happen every single day and nobody bats an eye, but if self-driving causes even one fatal accident, Japan will have a collective meltdown.
At most, self-driving will only work on highways.
There's no capacity to build out the infrastructure needed for self-driving on narrow 4- or 6-meter city streets.
Not happening anytime soon. Trucks especially still need someone to load and unload cargo.
Old man, that debate ended back in the 2010s.
There's no way some middle-aged amateur can handle blue-collar work.
Background and Key Points of Debate
The backdrop here includes the “2024 Problem” — new caps on truck drivers’ overtime hours — and the regulatory change adding the trucking industry to the “Specified Skilled Worker (Type 1)” visa category. Opinions in the thread split between blaming low wages for the labor shortage and arguing that even higher wages wouldn’t fix the sheer shortfall in numbers. Several commenters specifically pointed to a shortage of long-haul drivers. The possibility of self-driving technology replacing drivers also came up, but most comments focused on the hurdles still standing in the way of practical use — such as navigating city streets beyond the highway and handling loading and unloading — so the discussion never trended toward optimism. Note that because expanding the acceptance of foreign workers touches on debates over national policy design, comments expressing support for or opposition to specific political parties or policy platforms have been excluded from this article.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Logistics Industry Expands Hiring of Foreign Drivers, Spurred by “Specified Skilled Worker (Type 1)” Certification… “Sufficient Understanding of Japan’s Traffic Rules Required”.”
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