JAPAN:As Japan struggles with the world's fastest-ageing workforce, many companies are finding that pensioners still have plenty to offer, writes DAVID MCNEILL
JAPAN’S BAKING summer sun is hot enough to melt tar on the roads and, inside the Nishijimax factory, the thermometer is well north of 30 degrees. Susumu Sugiura is welding heavy steel plates, sweat pouring from his wrinkled brow. In the next building, his wife Kimiko uses a solder and screwdriver to wire an electric junction box. Challenging tasks for most – let alone a couple with a collective age of 145.
In other parts of the world, the Sugiuras might be whiling away humid days like this watching daytime television. Here in Aichi Prefecture, they are gainfully employed and an example of how shifting demographics are transforming the global workplace. A 45-year veteran of this precision tool-making company, Susumu (75) never even considered retiring at 60, which, at the time, was the national pension age. “It never really came up,” he says, wiping sweat from beneath his baseball cap. “I just carried on working.”
As probably the fastest-ageing country on the planet, Japan has millions of these fit pensioners. Over 22 per cent of the nation’s population is aged 65 or older, according to the National Statistics Bureau, a figure set to rise to 40 per cent by mid-century.
At the other end of the population pyramid, the world’s second-largest economy is running out of babies; Japanese women now have roughly 1.3 children in a lifetime, well below the level needed to maintain the current population of 127 million.
Those lopsided statistics have the Japanese government fretting. According to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the working population peaked at over 80 million in the late 1990s and will plummet by 40 per cent to about 49 million in 2050. Because Japan has so far shunned both mass immigration and workplace feminisation, it offers priceless lessons to the West on how to deal with a problem that looms in many other advanced countries – the mass retirement of baby boomers.
“I believe it’s a terrible waste to retire people at 60,” says Tokushi Nishijima, president of Nishijimax. “Sixty years ago, the average lifespan for a Japanese man was 51 and 53 for women. Now it is 85 for women and 79 for men.” That means well over 36 million Japanese today are over 60, he adds.
“There are plenty of healthy people who want to continue working, so why should we force them to quit?”
The third generation of his family to run the 86-year-old firm, Nishijima's philosophy has attracted a lot of attention. Two years ago, a high-powered delegation of European politicians including current German president Christian Wulff paid him a visit. "Last year, 2.5 million boomers retired in Japan; this year and next, another five million will go," Nishijima points out. "That's a lot of people who could help this economy."
Nishijimax supplies machine tools to the car and other industries and employs about 140 people; around 25 are over 60. It simply doesn't recognise the word "pensioner".
"Quitting hasn't entered my head and the boss hasn't mentioned it," says fitter Isamu Matsui who, at 59, would normally be considering putting his feet up. "As long as I'm healthy and of use to the company, I'd like to stay."
This is not charity, according to Yutaka Nishijima, who will one day take over his father's company – it's good business. Workers like Matsui and the company's oldest employee, spindle assembler, Katsuya Hyodo (77), who has been with the firm for six decades, have accumulated years of priceless experience. "Their experience can be passed on to the younger workers," says Nishijima Jr. "Some of these machines should be in a museum. We need old-timers to show how it's done."
Nishijimax is not the only company tapping its silver resources. High-tech multinational Hitachi rehires 70 per cent of its workers after they reach 60 and many other blue-chip giants, including Honda and Toyota, are following suit.
The Japanese government is also trying to make it easier for companies to retain older workers. In 2004, the ministry of labour began upping the legal retirement age in stages, from 60 to 65 by 2013, while at the same time pushing the age at which workers can receive their state pension back to 65. Essentially, the system has been recalibrated to allow the over-60s to keep working on reduced wages.
Critics say measures to keep people working longer are exploitative and are being driven by a looming funding crisis in corporate and state pension plans.
"The government is in trouble because it doesn't know what to do with all these retirees," explains labor researcher Fumihiro Seguro, editor of Hiroba Union, a monthly specialist journal on labour issues.
"In many cases, workers over 60 are hired back to do basically the same jobs, but on about half to 60 per cent of previous wages."
Seguro notes that many firms have been forced to scrap lump-sum pension payouts and instead pay in instalments. In addition, he says the national pension is being paid as a top-up for the wages of the over-60s – instead of retiring, the worker is re-employed and paid a mix of reduced company pay and state benefits.
Nishijimax is coy about what it pays its workers, divulging only that wages are decided according to ability and that the national pension is indeed used to supplement pay.
"It's a constant process of negotiation," says Nishijima. "Naturally, some abilities decline with age so we'll move people to other work. If they become ill, we tell them to look after their health first. If they want to quit, they can quit – it's entirely up to them."
Keeping Japan's ageing workforce employed longer is not as easy as just dropping retirement. Nishijimax has adapted the work routine to the needs of its older staff.
Every employee must undergo an annual health check that helps the company decide who can continue working. Overtime is kept to a minimum.
The company canteen and its 77-year-old cook, Asako Agata, plan the daily meals on a carefully calibrated nutrition plan right down to the reduced salt in the miso soup. The company grows many of its own vegetables in a plot behind the factory.
"My blood pressure is a bit high," says the firm's oldest hand, Hyodo. "But it's healthier to stay working. I wouldn't know what to do at home."
Will he ever quit? "It's not something the company can tell you to do. You have to keep listening to your body and decide for yourself."
His colleague Takayoshi Hirao (76) agrees. "Once you reach 70, you need to be careful. But the boss has told me he wants me to keep going for another 30 years," he quips.
As she solders electronic components, Kimiko Sugiura reflects on what life would be like without her daily trip to this factory.
"I was sick for a while last year and had to stay at home," she recalls. "When I came back I was very grateful to be able to work. If I was at home, I'd go senile."
Age ain't nothing but a number
Whatever about ordinary workers, many Japanese companies allow their executives to work on well past the age of 60.
Some do this by the back door, insisting that prospective chief executives have experienced a minimum number of positions within the company, of a sort that could only be covered by the time you were 55.
The bulging ranks of sexagenarian, septuagenarian and even octogenarian bosses include All Nippon Airways chairman Yoji Ohashi (70), Mitsubishi Corporation chairman Mikio Sasaki (72); Canon chairman Fujio Mitarai, (74), who also heads the Japan Business Federation, and 81-year-old Masamoto Yashiro (pictured right), chairman and chief executive of Shinsei Bank.
Casio's president Kazuo Kashio, at a sprightly 81, famously still runs the company with his two elderly brothers Toshio and Yukio.
"I sometimes think about retiring – but working is too enjoyable," Kashio said last year.
