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Designed as a way to stem abusive employment practices, the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry is now actively requesting that businesses disclose their employee turnover data when hiring new graduates. What is being targeted are employers that sign up a large number of new graduates assuming many of them will quit due to harsh working conditions such as extended overtime, low wages and harassment. These are colloquially known a “black companies”.
The Ministry is asking companies that hire university and graduate school students to include in the job opening posts they submit to Hello Work (the government’s job assistance bureau) figures for how many employees they hired and how many quit in the previous 3 years.
It is not mandatory to provide the turnover data, but failure to do so will likely raise suspicions among job seekers. Job opening posts for high school graduates already have boxes for disclosing turnover data.
Young workers at IT companies are said to have been the first to call their exploitive employers “black companies” in the early 2000s. Such companies are now found in a broad range of businesses, including retail, food, servicing, nursing and nursery services.
The ministry has surveyed about 4,000 companies across the country to check if they are complying with the Labour Standards Law and has provided guidance when necessary. It plans to bar companies that persist with abusive hiring practices from soliciting employees through Hello Work job centres.