From our other sites
The story
Regarding the food-service industry category, where new intake under the “Specified Skilled Worker (i)” status had been halted, the government has told a panel of experts that it plans to resume accepting workers — limited to meal-service cooks at medical and welfare facilities — by reclassifying them under the “food and beverage manufacturing” category. This is an emergency fix after a post-halt survey revealed a severe labor shortage, with resumption expected next April. On the forum, the argument that “raising wages would bring Japanese workers too” clashed with the counterargument that “nursing and welfare wages are tied to taxes and insurance premiums and can’t simply be raised,” while others pointed to competition for workers with other industries like convenience stores.
Regarding the issue of new intake being temporarily suspended in the food-service sector under the “Specified Skilled Worker (i)” residence status for foreign workers, the government told a panel of experts on the 19th that it plans to resume intake — limited to meal-service cooks at medical and welfare facilities — by reclassifying them under the food and beverage manufacturing category.
A survey conducted after the suspension revealed a serious labor shortage. While this amounts to an emergency fix of shifting the category rather than addressing the root cause, some experts are calling for the acceptance cap itself to be raised.
Employers wishing to bring in new meal-service cooks will be required to file fresh applications. The government plans to formally adopt the revised policy in a cabinet decision by year’s end, with intake expected to resume in April next year.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Then people will actually show up to work
People who want to work are already working
Raising wages won't bring anyone in
First target: 10% of the population
Just keep shutting them down and shift the workers to understaffed fields like nursing care and trucking
Convenience stores are infrastructure, they matter
Then cut the city-hall staff instead of convenience stores
Japan's infrastructure workforce is short because convenience stores are hoovering up all the workers
Plenty of countries actually regulate convenience store growth for that reason
Because they fixed the labor shortage and grew Japan's economy
Food factories today are already full of foreign workers
Finding a Japanese employee there is the hard part
Agriculture, food factories, convenience stores, beef bowl chains — every business that handles food already has foreign workers. What are you even talking about lol
Japanese workers are just avoiding jobs with low pay relative to the workload and responsibility
Importing cheap labor just keeps Japanese incomes from rising
Nursing care wages are basically capped from above
They can't just raise prices
"We thought we were importing labor, but we got human beings instead"
This is 5ch — don't you go to a convenience store late at night?
Have you reached the age where you shop at the supermarket in daytime instead?
In the city there's a convenience store every 30 meters
We don't need that many — cutting them to a quarter would still be plenty as infrastructure
The bigger harm is actually all the workers being siphoned off by convenience stores and restaurant chains
And when supply gets squeezed, it's the lower-income masses who suffer
Isn't that because of five layers of subcontracting skimming off the top?
Just get rid of the unnecessary middleman exploitation
This is the government's job, right?
There are way too many people taking a cut who aren't needed
You want Japan to turn into a riot-prone country like France?
Take it up with Takaichi
Can't be helped — it's for corporate profits and stock prices
We just have to endure it
Japanese people are docile, so it'll be fine
If you don't let nursing-care workers work for low pay, taxes will shoot way up
Consumption tax could hit 25%
Having foreigners work for low pay actually helps Japanese people
Don't let foreigners in
It's that simple
Incompetent managers who can only survive by exploiting low-wage labor should be weeded out
If you hire Japanese workers
You'll need to pay decent wages for it
And that means consumption tax and nursing-care insurance premiums go up
What do you mean?
It's a progressive tax system, so why would taxes go up — and both consumption tax AND nursing care???
Explain that one
There's a minimum wage, so in the same position Japanese and foreign workers earn the same amount
Instead of working cheap foreigners to the bone
Hire Japanese people
Nobody's applying because the pay is low
There's no way employers have that kind of money
Most of them are on the verge of bankruptcy
Exactly
Raising nursing-care workers' wages means consumption tax and the like will go up
The real problem is zombie companies that refuse to pay a fair wage
Just let those companies die already
They kept talking about "sustainability" in all that SDGs stuff
But never once addressed the most basic sustainability problem of all
In nursing care, workers' wages come out of tax money
So raising nursing-care workers' pay
Means raising taxes on the public
Background and key points of this discussion
“Specified Skilled Worker (i)” is a system for accepting foreign workers in fields facing severe labor shortages, and the food-service industry had previously had new intake suspended. This time, the plan only covers meal-service cooks at medical and welfare facilities, plugging the gap by shifting them into the “food and beverage manufacturing” category, which has different requirements — it is not a revision of the acceptance cap itself, a detail easy to miss from the article alone. On the forum, opinions split between “raising wages would bring Japanese workers too” and the counterargument that “wages in nursing and welfare are tied to insurance premiums and taxes, so simply raising them would come back as higher costs for users and higher premiums.” Some also raised concerns about competition for workers with other industries like convenience stores, suggesting the labor shortage can’t be fully explained by low wages alone.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Specified Skilled Worker (i)] Intake of meal-service cooks at medical and welfare facilities to resume — reclassified from “food service” to “food and beverage manufacturing” — survey reveals severe labor shortage“.
Leave a Reply