The present issue of Social Policy and Labor Studies features four papers that are based on presentations at the plenary session of the JASPS 134th Biannual Conference in 2017 entitled “Reconsideration of the Marketization of Welfare.” This introduction aims to describe the background and the intention of the plenary session, to introduce major points that were presented in the four papers of the Special Issue, and to discuss major issues for policy development and social policy studies that were raised by the presentations and discussions in this plenary session. The challenges facing social welfare policy in Japan examined here include unequal access to care services, worsening working conditions of care workers, and other related problems caused by the marketization of welfare. This introduction also examines challenges for social policy studies, including an analysis on the diversified and changing contexts of the third or nonprofit sector, the emergence of the “culture of the welfare market,” and changes in welfare and care labor in the context of the marketization of welfare.

The aim of this paper is to revisit―through the perspective of ‘welfare marketization’―the evolution of Japan’s welfare policies for the elderly, and to present the Long Term Care Insurance （LTCI） system’s current situation and fundamental problems. The findings of the paper are four―fold. Firstly, the ‘welfare marketization’ of Japan’s welfare policies for the elderly were undertaken in two phases : through the emergence of the ‘silver business’ sector and the implementation of contracting―out to private care providers under the means―tested system from the mid―1980s, and the introduction of the LTCI system from 2000. Secondly, due to the introduction of the LTCI system, ‘welfare marketization’ is expanding through private organisations to provide not only LTCI services but also to deliver care planning, conduct visiting assessments, and to provide other core care services, such as ‘advice and guidance consultancy’, which were once the responsibility of local authorities. Thirdly, under the LTCI system, service users’ livelihood security is no longer guaranteed as a public responsibility. Fourthly, the 2014 LTCI reforms call for the deployment of community resources and private organisations and for social participation by older people, posing the potential danger of a return to the ‘Japanese―style welfare society’ discourse.

The new system of child and child―rearing support was launched in 2015 with a view to enhancing the quality and increasing the supply of early childhood education, childcare, and child and child―rearing support services in communities. However, the new system has not eliminated the shortage of quality childcare slots. In addition, many day nurseries have had difficulty securing qualified staff.The true aim of this reform may be regarded as eliminating the clause in the Child Welfare Act that stipulates that the local government bears responsibility for providing childcare services, and as introducing a new scheme based on direct contracts between day nurseries and service users, thereby rolling back the state’s responsibility for childcare and creating a market for childcare services by facilitating the market entry of for―profit providers of childcare.While surveying the problems caused by the reform program, this paper focuses specifically on several resulting problems, including shortages of childcare workers. In addition, this paper elucidates the working conditions of childcare staff, based on the survey conducted by the National Union of Welfare and Childcare Workers, examines the government measures for securing nursery staff, and makes several proposals for addressing staff shortages.

At the end of the twentieth century, in particular from the 1980s, it became clear that modern welfare states were seeking to utilize the contract mechanism in the major social security services. Though the concept of contract has been fundamental to the functioning of Western states since the eighteenth century, the mechanism of contract has also been considered an appropriate means of providing social security under the modern welfare state governments. This “contractualization” is inevitably premised on the assumption of individualization and is connected to the introduction of the “quasi―market” into social security programs such as social care. In 1998, New Labour published its National Childcare Strategy, marking the first time since World War II for a British government to accept responsibility for childcare policy. This strategy has had two main goals : “social investment” for children and promoting mothers’ employment in order to reduce child poverty. At the same time, the strategy has promoted marketization of childcare. In 2010, the Labour Party lost power to a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition, and lost again to the Conservative in 2015, so the policymaking emphasis has shifted toward strong austerity. I examine British childcare policy from the point of view of gender equality.

In this paper, which focuses on work integration social enterprises （WISEs）, I will make three assertions, based on third sector theory, about the marketization and privatization of social welfare. First, it has become important to analyze the varieties of organizations engaged in social welfare because the proportion of in―kind benefits in social expenditure increases in developed countries. This approach, which is based on sectors such as the “non―profit sector” or the “for―profit sector” （I call this framework “sector essentialism”）, encounters difficulties when we analyze the relationship between the various social welfare organizations and the outcomes of social policies. Second, the “institutional logic model,” which is based on neo―institutionalism in organization studies, could be an important analytical tool to replace “sector essentialism” as the new framework for the analysis of social welfare organizations. The “institutional logic model” is a framework that separates social normativity or rationality from the organizational form to deliver an analysis of a variety of social welfare organizations, including WISEs. Third, by applying the “institutional logic model” to the activation policies, WISEs can be divided into two types of organizational forms, which follow different sets of “institutional logics.” This distinction provides important theoretical and policy implications.

The purpose of this article is to examine the employment relationship of dispatch workers and employees of outsourcing companies in the manufacturing industry. As the number of such workers increased rapidly from the early 2000’s, their work conditions gained national attention due to the problem of “disguised contracting” and the Haken―mura campaign. Although the labor campaign involving these workers had a large social impact, it has rarely been analyzed. This article focuses especially on the organization of these workers through the process of individual conflict resolution.In order to conduct the analysis, I focused on the following two points : 1） the tension between the strategies focused primarily on organizing within particular companies and those focused on individual membership, and 2） the effect of the legal framework on organizing strategies. In theory, there can be multiple organizing strategies, but since the 2008 financial crisis, many campaigns began to use lawsuits to demand direct hiring of workers and cash payments for dismissed workers.

This paper explores the possibility of restricting excess work hours by examining the role of labor unions in adopting the discretionary labor system. According to various studies, this system has made work hours longer. In order to determine the relationship between the adoption of the system and excess work hours, however, it is important not to overlook the role of labor unions. The Labor Standards Act requires an agreement between labor and management for the system to be valid.Thus, this paper clarifies the role of labor unions in the adoption of the discretionary labor system through interviews with labor union officials involved in selecting workers to whom the discretionary labor system is applied. It finds that in cases where a significant deviation occurs between deemed working hours and actual working hours, labor unions take steps to exclude such workers from the discretionary labor system. This investigation allows us to determine the effective means labor unions possess, through labor―management agreement, to restrict long work hours when the discretionary labor system is adopted.

The weakening of the Japanese employment system has created new categories of workers, such as the “peripheral regular workers” who work for the abusive employers commonly referred to as “black corporations”. These workers’ poor working conditions, low wages, and economic insecurity have drawn public criticism, but conventional enterprise unions have failed to organize them.During the 2010s, however, there has been movement towards forming new types of individual affiliate unions, which, unlike enterprise unions and earlier individual affiliate unions, aim to organize workers in burgeoning industries by industry and trade rather than by individual companies.This presentation examines the structures and functions of labor unions seeking to assist the growing number of “peripheral regular workers”. It also describes how and why these unions were established.

This study investigates changes in the Mutual Aid Association for Agricultural, Forestry and Fishery Organization Personnel. （Nourin Nenkin） during the 1970s by analyzing the relationship between Nourin Nenkin and labor productivity, wages, and business structure in the agricultural cooperatives, the Employees’ Pension Insurance system, and the National Public Service Personnel Mutual Aid Association. The main results are as follows : First, the Association’s credit business exerted a positive effect on labor productivity by creating additional value per employee as it grew larger. However, neither the merger of the agricultural cooperatives nor the scale of the insurance business had any effect on labor productivity. Second, the contribution rate, already high, of the agricultural cooperatives increased by a nominal amount, and the reserve―financing scheme was maintained. Third, given the wages of agricultural cooperatives’ employees, Nourin Nenkin realized high pension benefits. Finally, the study finds that the separation of the public pension schemes generated institutional competition between the schemes and improved pension benefits, as the revised rates and frameworks of the Employees’ Pension Insurance system and the National Public Service Personnel Mutual Aid Association were adopted for Nourin Nenkin.

This paper shows the effects of wartime labor policies on married female workers forced by economic necessity to work. It points out the problems they faced in the workplace and in raising children, and describes how such problems were dealt with.In the wartime period, the government considered married women employed as wage workers for economic reasons prior to the mobilization policy as part of the labor force, although this was not clearly legally encoded in law or imperial edict. As the war situation worsened, the government had no choice but to mobilize unmarried women who had not previously been forced to work, so it gave them special consideration. For this reason, conflicts erupted in workplaces between the women’s volunteer corps and the regular female workers. The differences in treatment accorded to the two groups of women were reduced in order to resolve conflicts, and it became possible to improve the work conditions of unmarried women. But the government expected married women forced to work by economic necessity to continue working without special consideration, and therefore did not improve these workers’ conditions despite their continued employment.