Haken (employment)

Haken (派遣, haken) is the Japanese term for temporary employees dispatched to companies by staffing agencies.

The temporary staffing industry in Japan is regulated by the 1985 Worker Dispatch Law. The original aim of this law was to regulate the extra-legal system of subcontractor personnel dispatching that had become commonplace in the automobile and electronics industries. Designed to allow project-based work and temporary staffing in sectors plagued by shortages of highly skilled workers (e.g., software specialists), the 1985 law limited temporary staffing to a "white list" of 13 occupations. But subsequent revisions steadily expanded its range of application. Notably, the 1999 revision replaced the "white list" with a short "black list" of occupations where temporary staffing remained restricted. This had the effect of opening most of the labor market to the temporary staffing industry. Finally, the 2004 revision removed most of the remaining restrictions on temporary staffing in the manufacturing sector.

The result was an enormous expansion of temporary labor in the Japanese labor market. Between 2000 and 2007, the number of regular employees in Japan declined by about 1.9 million, while the number of nonregular workers increased by about 4.5 million. By 2008, short-term contract and temporary staffing workers had increased from a small percentage to more than 30% of the Japanese labor force.

There are two types of haken:

(1) “Specified worker dispatching undertakings” whereby a temp agency hires temporary workers on a regular basis and sends them on assignment to work at its client companies.

(2) “General worker dispatching undertakings” whereby a temp agency registers temporary workers and sends them to its client companies on a contingent basis by signing a per-job contract each time the agency receives an assignment from its client companies.

Haken-giri (派遣切り) is the Japanese term for layoffs of temporary employees (haken) dispatched to companies by staffing agencies. In particular, it refers to the wave of layoffs that followed the financial crisis of 2008, which highlighted recent structural changes in the Japanese labor market and prompted calls for reform of the labor laws. Estimates of the number of layoffs between October 2008 and March 2009 range from 131,000, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, to 400,000, according to staffing industry associations. The problem was especially acute because temporary workers enjoy few of the rights and benefits that protect full-time regular employees. For example, at least half of Japan's non-regular workers are ineligible for unemployment benefits because they have not held their jobs a year or longer. In many cases, both haken and short-term contract workers were laid off before the terms of their contracts, but the lack of penalties in the labor laws meant that no redress was available except through civil lawsuits.

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