Facing Critical Labor Shortage, Japan Opens Door Wider To Foreign Workers
In front of Japan’s parliament on Friday, people stage a rally against the bill to allow more foreign workers into the country.
Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images
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Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images
Japanese lawmakers have passed controversial legislation expanding the number of semi-skilled foreign workers who can live and work in the notably insular nation for up to five years.
Japan has been pressed to make the change because of a critical labor shortage that results from its rapidly aging society and low birth rate.
Japan’s upper house of parliament passed the law 161 to 76 just after 4 a.m. Saturday local time, after a day when the opposition parties tried to unsuccessfully to block the measure.
The law will go into effect in April 2019.
The legislation has been viewed as a last-resort measure by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ultra-conservative government to address a severe shortage of workers in 14 industries, including restaurants, nursing, construction and agriculture.
According to the Associated Press, two categories of workers will be accepted, with conditions that will discourage them from trying to immigrate permanently.
The law will apply to as many as 345,000 less-skilled workers who will be allowed to stay for up to five years, but not bring in family members. It will also permit higher-skilled workers to enter with their families for 10 years and will provide them a path to Japanese citizenship. Both categories will have requirements for Japanese language competency.
Japan’s population is expected to decline from about 127 million to about 88 million by 2065, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security. In September, Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry released data showing that for the first time, one in five people in the nation is older than 70.
Japan has felt the pressure of an aging population and declining birthrates for decades. The government has tried to meet labor shortages by encouraging more employment of women and older workers, and using more robots and other automation.
And it does have foreign workers. Their number has more than doubled since 2000 to nearly 1.3 million last year, out of a working-age population of 67 million, according to the AP.
“Workers from developing Asian countries used to stay mostly behind the scenes, but not anymore. Almost all convenience stores are partly staffed by Asian workers and so are many restaurant chains.”
Many foreigners are working in Japan on training visas “that don’t allow them to switch jobs even if they are abused or underpaid,” says The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Thousands of student visa holders also work in Japan, often for longer than the 28 hours a week legally allowed.
But until now the government has resisted opening the door to a legal influx of semi-skilled foreign laborers, as many Japanese, particularly Abe’s right-wing supporters, fear a loss of cultural distinctiveness and homogeneity. It’s one reason the government has been careful not to characterize the new visa program as immigration.
But, as The Washington Post reports, Abe’s government is “closely entwined with the business community, and the message it hears from every quarter — shipbuilding and construction, agriculture and fishing, elder-care establishments and convenience-store owners — is ever more insistent: We need more workers.”
A report by Tokyo Shoko Research showed the number of bankruptcies in Japan caused by staff shortages doubled between 2016 and 2017, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Facing Critical Labor Shortage, Japan Opens Door Wider To Foreign Workers
In front of Japan’s parliament on Friday, people stage a rally against the bill to allow more foreign workers into the country.
Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images
Japanese lawmakers have passed controversial legislation expanding the number of semi-skilled foreign workers who can live and work in the notably insular nation for up to five years.
Japan has been pressed to make the change because of a critical labor shortage that results from its rapidly aging society and low birth rate.
Japan’s upper house of parliament passed the law 161 to 76 just after 4 a.m. Saturday local time, after a day when the opposition parties tried to unsuccessfully to block the measure.
The law will go into effect in April 2019.
The legislation has been viewed as a last-resort measure by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ultra-conservative government to address a severe shortage of workers in 14 industries, including restaurants, nursing, construction and agriculture.
According to the Associated Press, two categories of workers will be accepted, with conditions that will discourage them from trying to immigrate permanently.
The law will apply to as many as 345,000 less-skilled workers who will be allowed to stay for up to five years, but not bring in family members. It will also permit higher-skilled workers to enter with their families for 10 years and will provide them a path to Japanese citizenship. Both categories will have requirements for Japanese language competency.
Japan’s population is expected to decline from about 127 million to about 88 million by 2065, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security. In September, Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry released data showing that for the first time, one in five people in the nation is older than 70.
Japan has felt the pressure of an aging population and declining birthrates for decades. The government has tried to meet labor shortages by encouraging more employment of women and older workers, and using more robots and other automation.
And it does have foreign workers. Their number has more than doubled since 2000 to nearly 1.3 million last year, out of a working-age population of 67 million, according to the AP.
“Workers from developing Asian countries used to stay mostly behind the scenes, but not anymore. Almost all convenience stores are partly staffed by Asian workers and so are many restaurant chains.”
Many foreigners are working in Japan on training visas “that don’t allow them to switch jobs even if they are abused or underpaid,” says The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Thousands of student visa holders also work in Japan, often for longer than the 28 hours a week legally allowed.
But until now the government has resisted opening the door to a legal influx of semi-skilled foreign laborers, as many Japanese, particularly Abe’s right-wing supporters, fear a loss of cultural distinctiveness and homogeneity. It’s one reason the government has been careful not to characterize the new visa program as immigration.
But, as The Washington Post reports, Abe’s government is “closely entwined with the business community, and the message it hears from every quarter — shipbuilding and construction, agriculture and fishing, elder-care establishments and convenience-store owners — is ever more insistent: We need more workers.”
A report by Tokyo Shoko Research showed the number of bankruptcies in Japan caused by staff shortages doubled between 2016 and 2017, according to The Wall Street Journal.
How Atlanta Became A Soccer Town
Atlanta and Portland face on in Major League Soccer’s championship on Saturday. Atlanta’s team is only two years old and its success is due, in part, to massive fan support and a hometown strategy.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
When you think about sports in the South, you probably think football, not soccer. Well, think again. Tomorrow’s Major League Soccer championship is between the Portland Timbers and Atlanta United. The Georgia team is only in its second season, but it’s already setting a new standard for professional soccer attendance. As Emma Hurt from member station WABE reports, that success is no accident.
EMMA HURT, BYLINE: On a Saturday in June, the world’s most-attended soccer game wasn’t at the World Cup. It was in Atlanta. That might sound surprising but not to those who go to Atlanta United games and often fill a 72,000-seat stadium. Last week, thousands showed up at a watch party to cheer the team playing a semifinal game in New York.
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTS FANS: (Chanting) We are the A from way down South, and we are here, rowdy and proud. Sha-la-la-la (ph), sha-la-la-la.
HURT: The fan energy was electric.
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTS FAN: I actually believe in this team. I think we’re going to go all the way. It’s going to be awesome.
HURT: And before the team even left the field that night, the championship game happening in Atlanta tomorrow sold out. Again, that’s about 72,000 people. Keep in mind the average attendance of an American pro soccer game is more like 22,000. Atlanta United’s numbers are better than some pro football crowds.
But how? Well, the games are fun. Atlanta United’s owner, Arthur Blank, also owns the Falcons and opened a brand-new stadium for the two teams last year. But United games don’t feel like they’re in a football stadium. All the signage is digital. There’s barely a trace of the Falcons on a soccer day. Catie Griggs, who runs business operations for United, says that was a deliberate business decision.
CATIE GRIGGS: We have the ability to truly shift the physical infrastructure of the stadium to accommodate a different sport in a way that is meaningful and authentic and not simply an afterthought.
HURT: It showed fans that soccer was a priority. Another business decision that’s building goodwill – cheap concessions. Hotdogs are $2. At the baseball stadium across town, they’re $6.50. And then there’s the mechanics of the team. Blank hired management with global soccer pedigrees who in turn attracted talented, young players. But OK, a fun stadium and good players who are winning games – still, where are all these southern fans coming from? Matt Stigall started a petition back in 2011 to bring pro soccer to Atlanta, and even he is surprised.
MATT STIGALL: I was never expecting 70,000 people selling out every game, breaking records upon records and really setting a new standard for the league and having all eyes of the world look and be like, holy crap, Atlanta’s a soccer town.
HURT: One reason, he says, is Atlanta United has a clean soccer slate to take advantage of.
STIGALL: There’s a lot of people that I know that moved to Atlanta recently, brought all their original teams in the other sports, whether it’s NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, the team that their families have been fans of for generations. They don’t have a soccer team.
HURT: Plus there’s the general rise in American soccer popularity. Soccer TV viewership is up while football’s is shrinking. Soccer games don’t stop for commercial breaks, and the games are simply shorter. These are all reasons for the trend to continue, says Matt Doyle, a columnist for MLS.
MATT DOYLE: Thirty-five years ago when I was growing up, Major League Baseball was the undisputed number-one sport among all age groups.
HURT: But today, baseball is number three behind basketball and football. And soccer is soon expected to move into third place ahead of baseball. Here’s Griggs again with the team.
GRIGGS: It’s a serendipitous collision of time, opportunity, market where fundamentally our role is to not screw it up.
HURT: But Atlanta sports fans have a reputation to disprove – that they only support teams when they’re winning. The city’s basketball, baseball and even football teams are well-aware of that. No one knows if the stereotype will hold true here until Atlanta United starts losing. For NPR News, I’m Emma Hurt in Atlanta.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SEVEN NATION ARMY”)
THE WHITE STRIPES: (Singing) I’m going to fight them all. A seven-nation army…
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First 'Avengers: Endgame' Trailer Arrives as Release Date Moves Up; Here's Everything We Know
Ever since the devastating ending of Avengers: Infinity War, moviegoers have been dying to see what happens next and find out just what’s become of not only half of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe. The fourth crossover tentpole of the franchise, Avengers: Endgame, will see theatrical release just under a year later, hopefully with all our questions answered.
The first trailer for Endgame has now arrived to give fans hope that the surviving members of The Avengers will defeat Thanos and fix the galactic genocide he caused with his attainment of all the Infinity Stones and a snap of his fingers. Some familiar faces not seen in Infinity War now join the remaining original MCU heroes as the movie also just revealed a release date that’s a little sooner than expected.
Watch the trailer below after learning everything we know so far about the highly anticipated sequel.
Obviously there are SPOILERS for Infinity War from here on.
Who is left from Infinity War to star in Avengers: Endgame?
The survivors of the snap, as we’re reminded with the first trailer, include Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who is drifting alone in space, and Captain America (Chris Evans) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), who are working together to figure out how to deal with Thanos’ wiping out of 50% of all living creatures.
As we learned after the release of Infinity War, much of the follow-up movie will revolve around Captain America and Natasha (Black Widow). According to screenwriter Stephen McFeely (per BuzzFeed):
We had so many characters in movie 1, and we knew it was a two-movie conversation. Some characters were better served in movie 2 after this event. We were making some choices based on some characters we knew were going to leave us at the end of the first movie, so they got highlighted in the first movie. And some who were going to be in the second movie more maybe got less attention or less screentime [in Infinity War] — I’m thinking of Cap and Natasha, specifically. It’s about the story we wanted to tell in movie 2, mostly.
Briefly appearing in the trailer, Thor, Hulk, and Nebula are also still around. Not shown, War Machine, Rocket, Okoye and M’Baku were all last seen alive in Wakanda (see the full list of who lived and who died here), so presumably, they’ll all be back for Endgame in some capacity, as well.
Will Hawkeye and Ant-Man finally join in the fight?
Joining this round after sitting Infinity War out will indeed be Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), whose return is confirmed in reveals in the first Endgame trailer. The character has a new look, a new weapon of choice, and a new identity — as “Ronin.” And he seems to be out for blood — did he lose his family in the snap?
There’s also Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), who shows up at the Avengers’ front door with a hint that he knows how to help. And he’s got the van we saw at the very end of Ant-Man and the Wasp, when he seemed to be trapped in the Quantum Realm.
So the Quantum Realm is the key to reversing Thanos’ damage?
That’s not confirmed but very logically assumed by Ant-Man’s eager appearance in the first footage we’ve seen from the movie. Perhaps there will be some time travel involved, courtesy of that mysterious part of the MCU.
Do we know yet the whereabouts of other heroes whose status was never made clear?
As we noted in our list of who lived and who died, there are some characters whose status was never made clear by the movies nor the filmmakers. One of those is Black Panther’s sister, Shuri, whose face is seen in the first Endgame trailer with a caption that she is missing.
Also, Captain Marvel has to show up, right?
We can assume based on the symbol on Nick Fury’s pager in the Infinity War post-credits scene that Captain Marvel will definitely be flying into Avengers: Endgame ready to help save the day/universe. McFeely also promised in the BuzzFeed interview that Captain Marvel, which opens in February and is set in the 1990s, will also connect to the events of the Avengers sequel:
Put yourself in our positions two years ago. We’re looking at a blank wall, and it says Avengers 3, Ant-Man and [the] Wasp, Captain Marvel, Avengers 4. So there are four big shoeboxes, and we’re responsible for the bookends. As we’re going through deciding what we want to do, we have these two shoeboxes in the middle that you can either look at as burdens or opportunities.
Will the characters who died in Infinity War be resurrected?
The only thing that has kept Marvel fans from being totally devastated by the deaths in Infinity War is the assumption that most will be reversed in Endgame. After all, nobody is truly dead for long in comic books — or comic book movies. And in the comic series Infinity War is based on, the characters wiped out by Thanos’s powers are revived by another character, Nebula, after she takes possession of the Gauntlet.
Sadly, screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFreely said early on that’s not the direction the next movie would go in. Markus told BuzzFeed:
[Avengers 4] doesn’t do what you think it does. It is a different movie than you think it is. Also…[the deaths are] real. I just want to tell you it’s real, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you will be able to move on to the next stage of grief.
What about the characters who have more movies on the way?
Among those who disappeared at the end of Infinity War are Spider-Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Star-Lord and most of the other Guardians of the Galaxy. All of them either have definite sequels in the works or, especially in the case of the massive hit Black Panther, are expected to. McFeely addressed T’Challa’s death in the BuzzFeed interview specifically:
Remember, when we’re writing [Infinity War], and even shooting, there is no Black Panther movie. We don’t know it’s going to be so good, so effective, so resonant. And we had to treat all these characters the same. People who leave us [in Infinity War] are the leads of their own franchises. And Black Panther’s no different.
Also, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige continues to claim that Avengers 4 is a certain ending to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it, though that has often just seemed like a conclusion to a certain storyline. Last fall, though, Feige hinted to Vanity Fair that movies such as the next Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy films, and anything after Avengers 4, will be a new era of canon:
There will be two distinct periods. Everything before Avengers 4 and everything after. I know it will not be in ways people are expecting.
Will any more characters die in Endgame?
Oh yeah. For a long time, fans have anxiously expected that Iron Man and Captain America will die at some point because actors Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans are leaving the franchise. They survived Infinity War‘s brutal ending but they could be next. Co-director Joe Russo told Variety:
For us, there will always be stakes and the stakes have been progressing from film to film. And I think you can extrapolate that they will continue to deepen in Avengers 4.
And specifically when asked about the fates of Iron Man and Captain America, Joe Russo answered “with a sly smile”:
Just you wait.
Will Endgame be even longer than Infinity War?
This is very likely. And considering Infinity War has a running time of two hours and 36 minutes, that means Avengers 4 is going to be really, really long, as Joe Russo admitted to Collider, though this could change:
It could easily be a three-hour film but I think that we’re very hard on the material, we like it to play at a certain pace, so I’m sure we’ll squeeze it. We have a whole year of work left on that movie. I do think it’ll be longer than Avengers 3.
When can we see the movie?
April 26, 2019.
Watch the first Avengers: Endgame trailer:
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