Changing Jobs of Non-regular Workers and Human Resource Management

Abstract

In the recent years, the number of non-regular workers has been growing and the share of non-regular workers has been increasing rapidly. The quantitative increase in non-regular workers has resulted in the emergence of qualitative changes in employment of non-regular workers.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the change of ‘job’ assigned to non-regular workers and the human resource management in the 90's by analyzing of the case studies with 50 corporations.

In conjunction with the rapid expansion of non-regular workers in the 90's, the allocation of job between non-regular workers and regular workers changed. It became clear that the expansion of non-regular workers came with the qualitative change that the core job such as management job, directing job, and judgment job was transferred to non-regular workers. Such transition is referred to as "transfer to core job". 32 out of 50 corporations which had been the subject of the case studies have promoted the transfer of non-regular workers to core work.

In the 90's, corporations promoted the transfer of non-regular workers to core job with a clear intention, and various kinds of institutional responses have been effected. The transfer to core job is expanding to various kinds of industries more than has been indicated in the past.

Further, what is on-going is an human resource management which further segments the non-regular workers, using such method as the creation of more than one employment category within non-regular workers, or creation of senior positions in the employment category for part-time workers. We can observe the movement to reinforce the effort to select workers among non-regular workers, and take excellent level of non-regular workers into internal labor market, rather than positioning non-regular workers en masse as peripheral workforce which only has the function to adjust the internal labor market.

To what extent such tendency to realize transfer to core job can expand in a corporation which has not realized the transfer to core job at present would depend on the possibility such as to what extent the percentage of non-regular workers should be increased by promoting the standardization of the job. At the same time, the career factor represented by the greater stability of non-regular workers within the corporations is also an important element.

As to the non-regular workers who have been transferred to core job, conditions more favorable than those for other non-regular workers are made available in terms of job security and treatment. These changes in human resource management will lead to expand the variation of work patterns for workers, and change the position of non-regular workers who had shown less degree of stability in the corporations. The number of non-regular workers who will be assigned core job will increase. Problems to be solved are their career development paths and elimination the unreasonable differences in working conditions between non-regular workers and regular workers.