Joblessness adding to woes – Companies dismissing workers, but most have nowhere to turn
In the aftermath of last month’s Great East Japan Earthquake, employment has become another source of anxiety for people in disaster-hit areas as many who lost their jobs because of the disaster cannot find other work.
This trend is now spreading to even outside the areas most seriously affected by the disaster.
Early Thursday morning, Yoshiyuki Komatsu, 29, from the Watanoha district of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, stood in line in front of the Hello Work Ishinomaki employment agency. About 100 people had gathered by 8:30 a.m., the agency’s opening time.
“Honestly speaking, I want to find long-term work,” Komatsu said. “But I can’t be selfish now. I’ll do anything to earn money to live.”
Komatsu worked in a seafood processing factory in Onagawacho in the prefecture before the factory was swept away by tsunami on March 11. The company later dismissed him.
His 35-year-old wife was also dismissed after the dental clinic she worked at was destroyed by tsunami. The tsunami also destroyed the apartment the Komatsus lived in. They are staying with the wife’s parents for the time being.
“I’m wondering if I should apply for a part-time job related to earthquake reconstruction such as removing debris,” Komatsu said.
According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the number of people who were registered by April 25 to receive unemployment benefits totaled 40,215 in Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima prefectures. The number was 2.5 times larger than that for the same period of last year.
Mitsuko Chiba, 59, from Higashi-Matsushima, Miyagi Prefecture, visited the Hello Work Ishinomaki on Thursday to apply for unemployment benefits.
Before the earthquake, Chiba worked in an electric equipment factory in Higashi-Matsushima, which was destroyed by tsunami. She was dismissed by her factory with about 20 of her colleagues, the factory’s whole workforce.
Chiba said: “It can’t be helped that I’m jobless because everybody was affected by the earthquake. I’ll have to wait until the situation stabilizes.”
The labor ministry also found that new job offers in quake-hit areas fell in March.
In Iwate Prefecture, the number of new job offers was 5,709 in March, down 29.3 percent from February. In Miyagi Prefecture, it dropped to 8,839 in March, down 27.2 percent from February. In Fukushima Prefecture, it fell to 7,030 in March, down 23.3 percent from February.
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Temp workers also hard hit
Temporary workers living outside the quake-hit areas have also been losing jobs.
“We’ll terminate your contract at the end of April,” a 45-year-old man working temporarily at a car parts factory in Gunma Prefecture was abruptly told on April 4 by the human resources company that had got him the job.
A staffer of the human resources company explained to him, “Your car parts factory is having trouble because one of its clients, an automaker in a quake-hit area, suspended operations in the wake of disaster.”
The human resource company asked him to leave the dormitory he was staying in.
The man said, “When disasters like this occur, vulnerable people like me are the first to go.”
The Japan Community Union Federation, a grouping of labor unions mainly for temporary workers, established a new labor union on April 11 to cope with worsening unemployment environment caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and had conducted about 500 consultations as of Wednesday.
One case involved a woman who had worked part-time at a leisure facility in Kanagawa Prefecture. During the consultation, she said: “I’m living in poverty because my monthly salary decreased to 30,000 yen. The facility did not resume operations because the number of visitors fell.”
Shuichiro Sekine, secretary general of the new union for unemployment caused by the March 11 disaster, said: “After the disaster, some companies stopped their operations temporarily. But now they have started dismissing workers. If this situation continues, many people will be left jobless as happened after the collapse of Lehman [Brothers]. The central government should take effective measures to cope with the problem as soon as possible.”
The Yomiuri Shimbun , Apr. 29, 2011