> Surely after 4 years you'd know if they were worth it and convert to an employee
I think in many/most cases, the goal is not to have an additional permanent employee.
Most large, reputable companies completely gutted their hiring numbers for permanent positions after the 1989 crash. They still needed warm bodies to do stuff, so this “dispatch” system became much more common.
An unfortunate side effect of the growth of the dispatch system is that young people rightfully feel much less secure in their long term employment, so they ended up delaying or never making long-term commitments like marriage and having kids.
Imho, the growth of the “dispatch” system has been one of the leading reasons that Japan had the “lost decade” that seems to be working on its fourth decade. The federal government and the large corporations of Japan really dropped the ball on this, and they need to look in the mirror when they wonder out loud about the current societal and economic malaise.
While everything you say is true, this isn't really unique to Japan though? Shoving more and more work off to temps and vendors with much worse benefits than full-timers has become hugely common at large companies in the US and Europe as well.
> While everything you say is true, this isn't really unique to Japan though?
I can’t speak to many other countries, as I haven’t really looked as deeply into them as I have into Japan.
That said, the differences in Japan are significant in social ways that they are not in other places (like the US, where I currently live).
Want a decent/nice apartment? Some places won’t rent to you unless you have a permanent job (the dispatch jobs often/typically don’t count). It doesn’t matter if your income is much higher than it would be while working at the permanent job.
This exact experience happened to patio11 in a provincial part of Japan where it would probably have been prudent to try to be more accommodating to financially successful residents. For reference, he quit his salaryman job because bingo card creator was making a multiple of his salaryman income. When it came time to renew his lease, the landlord was not accommodating even though patio11 had proof of his drastically increased income.
Want to get married as a male? If you don’t have a permanent job, then your marriage stock takes a massive hit. The dispatch jobs are considered much lower on the prestige scale.
The list of detractions go on.
Note that this probably wouldn’t be a big deal if the changes had been gradual and/or society had changed just as rapidly, but those things didn’t happen. The hiring was completely gutted, and it never returned to anything close to prior form.
I will add that these changes happened during a time of rapid change in regulations (mostly deregulation) in Japan in the 90s. I personally think that these changes were probably good from a corporate-level economic perspective. That said, these changes also led to a complete and irreverent shattering of the social contract in Japan. It was not a change that most people wanted. It is a change that the government and the large corporations, with much goading from the US, foisted upon the broader Japanese population with complete disregard for the social fabric of society.
What could have been done differently? The changes could have been slower. Many of the changes just could have not happened, imho. Social support systems could have been developed before or while these changes were implemented. Pro-consumer laws could have been enacted.
Instead, the Japanese bureaucrats showed how deep in over their heads they were at the time by just acquiescing to western pressure to deregulate without really understanding why the existing system in Japan actually worked (short version: a lot of “non-competitive” features of the broader Japanese economy functioned as a de facto social safety/support system that never got replaced).
Note that patio11 has discussed this topic in more detail with more references than I currently have, so I would search for his stuff if you want to dig deeper.
