Voices of Thai Migrant Workers in Japan during COVID-19 Challenges
Yuko Aota & Dr. Yuki Miyake
Asian Research Center for International Development (ARCID), School of Social Innovation, Mae Fah Luang University
Background
In April 2019, the Japanese government opened up the country to receive unskilled migrant workers seeking employment in Japan to compensate for labor shortages after a prolonged history of the Immigration Bill amendment. The ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has launched Japan's new immigration policy, especially in the agriculture sectors and construction sectors, with a working condition of 5 years and a maximum of 10 years (Japantimes News, 2018). Before migrant workers come to Japan, Japan provides a foreign interns program to learn about the Japanese way of life locally in agriculture farm works. As a result, many Japanese companies have received foreign workers through this program (Japantimes News, 2018). Many foreign workers come from China, Myanmar, Vietnam, the Philippines, and so on including Thailand. In the case of Thailand, Japan provide more than 500,000 for Thai workers, especially, who know the Japanese language skills, to come to work in Japan in the sectors of agriculture, construction, hotels, caregivers, and the shipbuilding industry (Japantimes News, 2018).
According to Kattiya Pandech, the director of the Office of Overseas Employment Administration in Thailand, the new Japanese Immigration Bill was an excellent opportunity for Thai skilled workers, particularly those 5,000 workers who have completed training in Japan before. They would be exempt from the compulsory Japanese language and work skill tests if they want to return to Japan to work in the same field. Workers who have not attended such training must first pass a Japanese language and work skill test (HR Asia News Report, 2020).
Since then, there are a lot of Thai workers living in Japan, but in the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 pandemic has begun, and the wave of COVID-19 has influenced the foreign worker's living, Thai migrant workers in Japan. Based on the background, the authors asked two questions in this article: (1) What kinds of impact do Thai migrant workers receive from the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan?; and (2) During the spread of COVID-19, how did the Japanese government provide measures to support migrant workers in Japan? Is it helpful enough for migrant workers or not? In order to answer the questions, the authors interviewed four Thai migrant workers in Japan via online call. As a result, this article aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Thai migrant workers in Japan; and understand how the Japanese government implements the measures to deal with the issue and support immigrant workers in the country.
Introduction of Four Thai Migrant Workers
The interviewees in this study consist of four Thai migrant workers living in Japan: an office worker, a hotel staff, an agriculture worker, and a livestock worker, respectively. This part introduces the short history of those four migrant workers and their work status in Japan, including skilled and unskilled labor affected by the COVID-19 pandemic on their work from the interview.
The first case is an office worker, a Thai woman aged 25 years old. When she was young in high school, she went to Japan as an exchange student. After that, she was interested in living in Japan. She returned to Japan to study tourism at the Japanese University and got Japanese proficiency N1 level. She mentioned that COVID-19 hit her career, causing her to resign from the tourism school, which affected her visa. Therefore, she has waited for a work visa to get the full-time working status. In November 2020, she got the acceptance letter from her current work and now works as a team leader of the contact center and quality assurance of the delivery food company.
The second case is a male hotel staff member around 25-years old who can speak Japanese and has Japanese proficiency at N2 level. He went to Japan during the COVID-19 spread before the airport closure, so he was lucky to go to Japan before Thailand and Japan closed. Currently, he has lived in Japan for six months, starting from December 2020. He works as service staff at a hotel or ryokan in Japanese, taking care of both Japanese and foreign customers who come to travel in Japan. His main job is the work at the ryokan. While working in the hotel, he has another job at a private company of recruitment agency service as a coordinator of the migrant workers in charge of non-immigrant visa management. He also works at a restaurant and does freelance work.
The third case of the agricultural worker is a Thai man around 40 years old. He can communicate with the Japanese language in daily activities but cannot write Japanese. His Japanese proficiency is at the N5-N4 level. He has lived in Japan for five years and worked in agriculture, especially mulberries farming. His workplace is not a company but a private farm family, where he has to follow the orders of his employer, such as cut the grass, clean the toilet or take a dog for a walk.
The fourth case of livestock worker is a Thai man around 27 years old, works on the pig farm. He is an unskilled worker that comes to work in Japan on specific sector work. He has lived and worked in Japan for four years and eight months, and in everyday life, he can communicate in a limited Japanese language.
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Work
This section explains the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Thai migrant workers who were affected in each work sector. The information is based on interviews with the four Thai migrant workers introduced above.
The first case is an office worker. Her company is a delivery food company and can continue to open as usual. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 outbreaks made many food companies or restaurants lack the budget and lesser income. It is because many capitalist and foreign companies became unable to trade with her company. As a consequence, her company decreased its income, but her salary has been still fully paid.
Continuously, for the Ryokan hotel staff, he explained that the COVID-19 made the number of tourists and guests decrease, which impacted the largest income for the company. In one case, the hotel received the guests, and the guests do not want to receive any service to avoid COVID-19 transmission. Therefore, tips from customers have decreased, but his basic salary has been fully paid. Concerning his work at the restaurant, COVID-19 also impacted the decreasing number of customers.
For the two unskilled workers, an agricultural worker and a livestock worker, their workloads also declined, including overtime work. Different from above two cases, the spread of COVID-19 decreased their salary since their salary is according to the workload. An agricultural worker explained the agriculture company was affected by the decreasing export of the vegetable. During this COVID-19 era, the export activity has been limited to two times per week, and his company could export only one week per month. Moreover, the working schedule has also changed, and it became only in the morning, starting at 4:00 am to 11:00 am. and then going back to rest. As a consequence, it affected the salary of his primary job as an agricultural worker. Fortunately, the employer could have asked him to do other jobs, such as housework, to get some money.
In the meantime, the livestock worker has increasing workload recently. He described that he has to take working responsibility for his Japanese co-worker. A daughter of his Japanese co-worker in the same section was infected with the COVID-19, so the co-worker had to stop working and quarantine himself and his family for 14 days. Thus, he worked more instead of the co-worker. However, on another occasion, some pigs on the farm have been infected by COVID-19, so they had to kill pigs. While the farm lost some of their pigs, the workers decreased their salaries.
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Daily Life
While the previous section explains the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work, this section focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the daily life of four Thai migrant workers before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before the COVID-19, the office worker had lived in the countryside city where she could enjoy going outside and meeting with many people to do outdoor activities. She also attended the dancing club, which made many friends. She felt entertained to meet many people in society. However, after the COVID-19 spread, it made people keep social distance, stay and live inside homes. As a result, the COVID-19 pandemic affected her significantly, and mainly made her unable to meet many people or go-to outdoor activities anymore. Moreover, the COVID-19 also affected her plans. She lost her dream of what she wanted to do, and it has to be canceled.
In addition, she also remarked on the different costs of the healthcare product. She explained that during the COVID-19 spread, healthcare products became more expensive, from 300 yen to 3,000 yen for the first time, but even if it is expensive, people buy stock of the products until it is out of stock. Due to that, the Japanese government announced a limit on the price rate of healthcare products, and if they still sell expensive, they are fined.
For an agricultural worker, the COVID-19 has also affected his daily life because there was a prohibition on going outside or eating; this made him feel uncomfortable because he cannot live and go outside normally anymore. He can only go to work and then return to stay in the room in the company.
The support from the Japanese government
This policy of Japanese Government is not only for the Japanese nation but also for migrant workers in Japan. The Japanese government has provided monetary support of 100,000 yen to the people in Japan after the spread of the COVID-19. As a result, the foreign migrant worker could also receive it in the same way as the Japanese. This Special Cash Payment was provided under the cabinet's declaration of COVID-19 protective measures on April 20th 2020 and ongoing attempts to control the spread of infection, named "Emergency Economic Measures for Coronavirus Disease." This basic framework is intended to provide immediate assistance and financial support to every Japanese household (Ministry of International Affairs and Communications, 2020).
To receive the support, the workers filled out the documents, and the employer company helped them process them. There are some steps of getting this support, namely 1) both Japanese and migrant workers have to fill out the required form to apply for the support budget, 2) for the application documents, the Japanese government send the form through fax or postage to the people to fill in and seal their own to verify identity to apply to receive the support money or it can be applied by online. After that, they receive 100,000 yen, and the people who have no income can also apply to receive the support money from the Japanese government. However, the monetary support can be claimed by transferring to the applicant's bank account.
As additional information, many restaurants have to close because of the COVID-19 outbreaks. So, the Japanese government set up a policy to provide monetary support for every restaurant that applied and followed certain conditions such as closing the restaurant for some periods. For example, according to the office worker, a Thai food restaurant she knows had got the budget support of 900,000 yen from the Japanese government during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Discussion and conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic this time had a massive impact on the world. Japan has also been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only the economic sector but also people's daily life or working style have also changed.
Many migrant workers in Japan are affected by the COVID-19 spread, whether skilled or unskilled workers. In the case of Thai migrant workers in Japan, including an office worker, a hotel staff, an agriculture worker, and a livestock worker, all of them were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic on daily life and work problems. There are different points between skilled and unskilled workers. The two types of skilled and unskilled workers, which both are affected by the COVID-19 spread, their working process became more limited, and they lost some salary because they could not work overtime as before. To compare, the skilled workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic could not work overtime as before, but their salary has not decreased but still received the same amount of payment each month. However, the unskilled workers have got affected and decreased their income because they receive the wage at the work-hour bases depending on the tasks each day. The decrease of the workload, decreased the overtime work, and decreased their income. The limitation of their working space also made their salary decrease.
Broadly, COVID-19 also affects the foreign worker's working contract, mainly from Thailand. The Thai migrant worker who works in the agricultural sector has explained that during the COVID-19 spread, the airport has to close, and there is no flight of departures or arrivals. Therefore, migrant workers in Japan cannot go back to their hometowns currently. Consequently, the employers of many work companies cannot receive new internship trainees or migrant workers from other countries to come to work in Japan, and it makes the employer can continue hiring the current employees because of a lack of workers.
The Japanese government has provided monetary support to both individual workers and corporations. It also provided vaccination for the Japanese people and also migrant workers in the country. Nevertheless, provision of the vaccination process to people was delayed, so many Japanese people complained about it. They also complain about the Olympic Games because the Japanese government has spent much money on the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Instead of the Olympics, many people think that the government should have focused on people's lives first.
Thanks to Ms. Reni Juwitasari, the Research Associate of Japan Program, Asian Research Center for International Development, School of Social Innovation, Mae Fah Luang University, for editing this article.
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