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Japan: Low Salaries, Long Hours Need to Be Improved |
| Source: |
yomiuri.co.jp |
| Source Date: |
Sunday, May 06, 2012 |
| Focus: |
ICT for MDGs
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| Country: |
Japan |
| Created: |
May 08, 2012 |
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Low salaries are one reason behind the difficulty in securing sufficient numbers of day care workers. According to the government's basic survey on wage structure in 2011, the average monthly salary for a private day care worker was only 220,000 yen.
"The system is dependent on workers' motivation. The wage isn't commensurate with their physical or mental burdens," said Teikyo University Prof. Yuichi Murayama, an expert on early childhood care and education.
"The job requires long hours, and their annual income does not increase much even if they continue to work for five or 10 years. Under such circumstances, it's difficult for them to work for many years," Murayama said.
Day care centers are managed with subsidies from the central and local governments, and child care fees from parents.
"Labor costs account for about 80 percent of all management costs," Murayama said. "It's difficult to raise child care fees, so it's hard to improve day care workers' salaries unless government subsidies are raised."
To make ends meet, an increasing number of day care centers are hiring workers as non-regular employees.
According to a survey conducted by the Japan National Council of Social Welfare in 2006 on 11,605 institutions across the nation, 39.7 percent of day care workers at public child care centers were non-regular employees. In private child care centers, the percentage was 26.9 percent.
Child care centers operate for longer hours than before and an increasing number offer services on holidays and at night.
This has made the job situation for day care workers even more severe. Their average tenure is 8.4 years, according to a 2011 survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
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Japan: Low Salaries, Long Hours Need to Be Improved Low salaries are one reason behind the difficulty in securing sufficient numbers of day care workers According to the government's basic survey on wage structure in 2011 the average monthly salary for a private day care worker was only 220,000 yen
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