The purpose of this study is to clarify the labor supplying behavior of contract businesses. The contract business saves as much money as possible by cutting unnecessary costs to make more profits and supplies the labor that corporate clients demand. Therefore, the laborers whom the contract business demands are laborers who can accept working condition or place of work change requests, and laborers who effectively assist in the labor cost savings of the contract business. In particular, these laborers are unmarried youths or foreigners in Japan, among others. The contract business recruits laborers in a suitable region for supplying this type of labor. The labor supply area of the contract business is principally defined as the travel-to-work area of each corporate client, because this area is the effective area for the contract business to save welfare and recruitment expenses. However, it is difficult for the contract business to supply the labor demand only in the travel-to-work area. Therefore, to supply suitable labor that matches the contract demand, the contract business supplies labor from other than the travel-to-work area. To do this, the contract business establishes an office to supply the labor or sends recruitment staff to areas other than the travel-to-work area of a client. The labor supply area this paper refers to is the peripheral areas in Japan, such as Okinawa, Hokkaido, and the Kyushu district, and the metropolitan areas, such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. In the peripheral areas in Japan, the unemployment rate is relatively high. However, in these areas there are a large number of people who wish to be temporary workers. It is easy for the contract business to employ a young, unmarried person in these areas. In particular, the contract business that is located in Higashi-Hiroshima City supplies labor from the Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu districts. In these districts there are relatively few workers that do not like having to work in Higashi-Hiroshima City and the contract business can save recruitment expenses in the supplying of labor in these districts, because these districts are comparatively close to this city.

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Since the 1970s, neoliberalist deregulation and increased flexibility in the labor market have led to increasingly expansive use of labor market intermediaries (LMIs) between employers and employees in many sectors. LMIs not only eliminate mismatch in the labor market, but also play an active market-making role. In Japan, one of these LMIs, referred to here as ‘labor contractors,’ grew through the employment of Japanese-Brazilian labor with the sharp growth of the electronics and auto industries in the 1970s to 1980s.

The purpose of this study is to examine the process of market expansion of labor contractors focusing on geographic sectorial expansion strategies, from the point of view of LMIs as an active agency. This study introduces the case of Minokamo City, Gifu Prefecture, a city with a high ratio of indirect employment in manufacturing and the use of migrant workers.

Following their deregulation in 1952, LMIs in Japan have expanded into various sectors including manufacturing. More recent neoliberalist deregulation has generally liberalized LMI’s businesses, developing favorable environments for them.

In the context of the labor shortage in the electronics and auto industries in the 1980s, labor contractors, such as LMIs in manufacturing, geographically expanded their labor sources to include Brazil. In the recession of the 1990s, labor supply destinations were expanded to lower-paying and more volatile sectors, where Japanese workers were unwilling to work, and geographically to the peripheral areas including Minokamo City, one particular city that had experienced a labor shortage due to rapid industrialization in the 1980s.

After 1992, labor contractors supplied extensive Japanese Brazilian labor to manufacturing plants in Minokamo City, but the worldwide financial crunch in 2008 affected their market. As a result, they expanded their markets by geographic sectorial strategies in order to overcome the crisis.

The case of Company A reveals that labor contractors could survive the crisis by expanding their market to lower-paying and more volatile sectors for unemployed Japanese Brazilians in the electronics and auto industries. Although the population of Japanese Brazilians greatly decreased, labor contractors continued expanding their market by looking for people who could assume the roles of Japanese Brazilians.

Moreover, those business activities of labor contractors consist of a relationship beyond the triangular relationship between the LMI, employee, and client. Their business became well established in Minokamo through economic relations around residences for labor or parking spaces for labor contractors, participation in the local community, and establishment of opportunities for certification, etc. Labor contractors and local actors interact in diverse ways, and their relationships have deepened following the crisis.

The businesses of labor contractors lead to the expansion of a short term labor market, which is preferred by neoliberalism, and to the expansion of precarious work situations. The neoliberalist labor market reforms since the 1990s obviously have driven the business growth of labor contractors, and consequently they shape neoliberalist restructuring in the labor market. Consequently, this market expansion by labor contractors in Minokamo City could be seen as a neoliberalist restructuring process.

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業および労働者派遣業を通じて製造部門に従事する労働者の就業特性を、鹿児島市での聞き取り調査の結果に基づいて明らかにした。

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The labour supply project or labour-only contracting was prevalent in the Japanese labour market before World War II. It often involved intermediate exploitation and forced labour. The Employment Security Law enacted in 1947 strictly prohibited the labour supply project. It also prohibited "indirect employment relationships" or "triangular employment relationships". The government considered them as a kind of the labour supply project. However, the Worker Dispatching Law enacted in 1985 permitted "indirect" or "triangular employment relationships". The government made it lawful for a company to direct and order a worker without employing him/her, and for a dispatching agency to employ a worker but let others direct and order him/her. The client company may in fact dismiss the dispatched worker by terminating or revoking the contract with the dispatching agency. The client company does not have any responsibilities as an employer to the dismissed dispatched worker. The "indirect employment relationships" make it easy for the client company to adjust its work force. In this way it became possible for a client company to avoid most employer responsibilities. In other words, the Law allowed that the dispatching agency commercialized surrogate services of employer responsibilities and the client company bought the services from the agency. The Worker Dispatching Law originally limited the types of work for which a worker could be dispatched and the period for which a client company could utilize a dispatched worker. Since the latter half of the 1990s, the Law was revised several times as a part of the labour market deregulation agenda. It liberalized, in principle, the designated work to which the worker could be dispatched, except for construction, security service and longshoring. The revision also extended upper limit of the period that the client company could use a dispatched worker in the same workplace. Nowadays, "indirect" or "triangular employment relationships" prevailed in most industrial sectors, such as manufacturing, information and communications, transport, wholesale and retail trade, finance and insurance, eating and drinking, public sector and so on. Not only dispatching agencies but also labour-only subcontractors assign many workers to the factories of big firms, legally or illegally. Quite a lot of temporary dispatched workers work for the clients for a short-time contract, including one-day contract. The big dispatching agencies or labour-only subcontractors built the information networks for job applicants and clients. Job applicants can book in them by mobile phone, wherever they are. It means the agencies or subcontractors succeeded in collecting the data of "the industrial reserve armies". Today, the number of the employees in "indirect employment relationships" is estimated at more than 3 millions. Client companies require the dispatching agencies or labour-only subcontractors to reduce a fee for dispatching workers. The agencies simply supply the clients with the low-paid workers who are not guaranteed social security or their minimum rights stipulated by the Labour Standards Law. Thus it seems the labour supply project is actually restored. However, it doesn't mean reversion to the feudalistic employment relations, but the expanded commercialization of surrogate services of employer responsibilities. Under tough competition for lower cost, some agencies or subcontractors tend to avoid carrying out the surrogate services. In some cases nobody exercises the employer responsibilities. The "indirect employment relationships" have absorbed the unemployed population, thereby, on the surface, reduced the unemployment rate. But they actually brought about a lot of irregular or precarious employment.

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Today, Japan is entering a new era of mass unemployment and irregular, precarious employment. The number of unemployed persons exceeded 3.5 million and the rate of unemployment was over 5.4 percent in 2002. While the number of regular employees was cut by 3.99 million from 1997 to 2002, irregular employees increased by 3.68 million during the same period. This has been brought about by both personnel management by employers and by the government's deregulation policies in order to overcome the current depression and survive against the tough competition in the globalization of the economy. Growing globalization has been forcing Japanese companies to reduce labour costs and labour standards. Moving Japanese factories and establishments overseas has hollowed out domestic industries and increased unemployment. Flexible employment will allow companies to increase efficiency by cutting labour costs on the one hand, but will also impose difficulties on the Japanese economy by curtailing demand in the domestic market on the other hand. Replacing regular employees with irregular ones means an increase in the ratio of low-wage earners. Therefore, we should pursue increased job opportunities by ensuring fair labour standards which have been jeopardized by globalization.

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本稿の目的は青森県南部町と秋田県東成瀬村を事例に，特定地域づくり事業協同組合の性格の地域差を明らかにすることである．両地域では地域外からのサポートによって労働者派遣法に対応した運営体制の構築やホームページの整備が進められ，事業協同組合が設立されている．また，南部町では求人のウェブサイト，東成瀬村では地域内のハローワークを通じてマルチワーカーが募集された．そのため，南部町のマルチワーカーは地域外からの新規就農希望者であるのに対し，東成瀬村は地域内居住者が主である．こうした属性の違いから，南部町ではマルチワーカーに対する農業技術の研修を充実させている一方，東成瀬村ではマルチワーカーへの手当を厚くしている．したがって，両地域の事業協同組合は，南部町では新規就農希望者が農業技術を習得する学びの仕組みとして機能しているのに対し，東成瀬村は地域内の居住者が安定して雇用されるための仕組みといえる．

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