Japanese workers are turning to redundancy agencies to quit jobs

• By Justin McCurry/The Guardian

Mari was only two months into her new job when she decided she had had enough. The job at an online bank in Tokyo, found through an employment agency, seemed a perfect fit for the 25-year-old, a member of Japan’s legions of temporary workers.

However, she soon became despondent.

“On my first day they gave me a big manual to read, and when I went to my boss with questions, he said, ‘Why the hell are you asking me that?’” she said.

Photo: Bloomberg

Mari, who asked that her real name not be used, was regularly forced to work late and her boss’s behavior became more threatening.

“He asked me why I was taking so much time to finish a task and pretended to slap me when he thought I had made a mistake,” she said. “And he would do things like deliberately throw my pencil case on the floor. It was power intimidation, pure and simple.”

Unable to muster the courage to tell her boss she wanted to quit, she sought help from a company that offers proxy resignations, a fast-growing service for Japanese workers who can’t bring themselves to resign in person.

Tokyo-based agency Momuri has reported rising demand since it started offering remote discharge services two and a half years ago.

“We are submitting resignations on behalf of people who for whatever reason cannot do it themselves,” said Shinji Tanimoto, the head of Albatross, the company that runs Momuri – Japanese for “enough already.”

“Sometimes it’s just a natural reluctance, but some may have faced intimidation or even violence from their employers. They are at their wits’ end when they come to us,” Tanimoto said.

The company, one of an estimated 100 companies across Japan offering similar services, has received 350,000 online consultations and submitted 20,000 dismissal applications to date.

Experts have attributed the trend to a generational shift in attitudes towards work, accelerated by the disruption to jobs and lifestyles caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as working from home prompted many people to reconsider their work-life balance.

Japan’s chronic labor shortage – a symptom of its low birth rate – has also made employers more determined to retain workers, even if it means intimidating them into staying. Some force employees to find their own replacements before accepting their resignations, or tear up their resignation letters in front of their eyes.

After contacting Momuri through a popular messaging app, customers are asked to fill out a questionnaire, sign a contract and pay a fee: ￥22,000 (US$147) for full-time workers and ￥12,300 for part-time or permanent employees . term contract.

One of Momuri’s fifty employees then calls the employer on behalf of the client. The process, from initial consultation to dismissal, can take as little as 20 to 30 minutes, says Tanimoto, whose firm retains attorneys to handle legal disputes.

60 percent of Momuri customers are people in their twenties, including a large number of recent graduates.

According to Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, more than 30 percent of new graduates leave their jobs within three years — a figure that would have been unthinkable during Japan’s postwar economic miracle.

There are countless reasons for wanting to resign, says Tanimoto, whose company has a 100 percent success rate: from unpaid overtime, low wages and breaches of contract by employers, to verbal abuse, violence and sexual harassment.

“In Japan, companies are traditionally strong – what your employer says applies,” he said. “And the Japanese are generally reluctant to rock the boat. Resigning is seen as escaping and avoiding your responsibilities. But that is changing.”

The surge in demand for remote layoffs has been attributed to a disconnect between Gen Z workers and companies whose corporate cultures are rooted in the post-war era, when lifetime employment, promotions and pay increases were expected to be rewarded with absolute loyalty from the workforce. staff. Many bosses consider a dismissal request a personal insult.

Although Momuri’s customer base is mainly young, she also receives requests for help from older employees.

“We deal with all kinds of companies, from household names to small businesses,” said Tanimoto, whose company once submitted a massive 45 layoff requests to the same company.

The response from employers is variable. A small number express remorse and indirectly apologize to the employee, and most simply accept the decision and complete the necessary paperwork.

“But a small number of them get angry and threaten to show up at our office, things like that,” he said. “When they behave like this, you wonder how terrible it must have been for the customer.”

Proxy discharge agencies say consultations spike after long holidays, weekends and even after a rainy day – times when people tend to be more reflective. One in six workers in Japan used redundancy agencies to change jobs in the 12 months to June this year, said Mynavi, an employment information provider.

The largest group, 40.7 percent of respondents, said they sought help because their employer had prevented them from leaving or was likely to do so. Nearly a third said their work environment made it impossible to communicate their intention to quit, while nearly 25 percent said they feared their company would respond poorly.

Toui Iida texted a layoff agency last month, a month after he was hired by an information technology company on a short-term contract.

“The job was much more physically demanding than I was told, so I decided to quit,” says Iida, who is now between jobs. “But when I told my manager, he pointed out that I had signed a one-year contract and hadn’t been there that long, so he refused to let me go.”

It took just hours for the 25-year-old to cut ties with his employer.

“I was so happy that I didn’t have to work the next day. It was like I got a second chance,” he said.

Mari, who is back at work, felt a similar wave of relief.

“The experience had affected my physical and mental health,” she said. “In Japan you are expected to commit yourself to your company… Giving up is out of the question. However, people of my generation are different. We are more calculated about our life choices, and for me that means putting my personal happiness above my work.”