Japanese workers turn to resignation agencies

Can anyone in Japan share what ground truth looks like around this? Does this churn matter to businesses when they’re in a labor supply shortage? Do these folks have other jobs they’re moving to? Or are they potentially NEETs bailing on being employed?

This definitely exists, even when switching jobs.

However I would say that IMO it's another case of foreigners buzzing by depicting boring and common stuff under a "weird Japan" light.

Shitty companies manipulating employees to stop them from resigning is something that exists in any country. And this escalating to the labor authorities or going through a lawyer is not a rare thing anywhere either.

It happens more frequently in Japan because the culture of not being confrontational is strong. The fact that lawyers can afford to specialize in this matter alone is just a logical result of the larger number of customers.

EDIT: I also want to add this: if you have been in a company for a while, you are eventually going to see or hear about how resignation is handled for other employees. If you want to quit and already know that the company is going to harrass you and make your life hell, is it so weird to save your time and mental health to delegate all of that to a dedicated professional?

Based on what I’ve seen and heard (luckily, not experienced), I think it depends on the company. Smaller ones with older management may be both more reliant on the labor and more used to lifetime employment. I suspect there’s probably some maximal fuckiness point. Most companies aren’t like that, but resignation in Japan has a lot of stigma even if everything goes well, so many people will use these services just so they don’t have to deal with it.

The way the culture works there’s no way for the managers to be anything but unfailingly polite to an external party that calls to resign on behalf of the employee.

My gf used one. She had a legal right to quit but it was inconvenient for the company. They refused multiple times, they also gaslit with "what about the children we teach, if you leave the school might have to close" etc. etc.

Using the agency means you do a 10 minute phone call and that's it. You don't even have to work your remaining days or talk to the company ever again. The agencies seem to have some legal powers that a normal person doesn't, or at least in reality they get results much faster and aren't allowed to screw around.

What did amuse me is there's a discount if you use them multiple times.

> Shitty companies manipulating employees to stop them from resigning is something that exists in any country.

I have never heard of it in the US. I’m sure some examples exist but I’d be really unpleasantly surprised if it’s a major social issue here.

Does it? You hear stories in the US of people trying to manipulate employees into not quitting or lambasting them for leaving, but trying to actually, seriously deny their ability to quit is nearly unheard of.

Is that "gaslighting" or simply plain old guilt tripping?

Amen.

IMO, it's an tortured example of Hanlons Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I see tons of shitty stuff roll downwards to employees in US companies, but I never see the kind of competence at the upper levels to pull off the kind of manipulation implied here. It's just negligence, ignorance, and dysfunctionality that tends to screw us yanks at the bottom.

> Shitty companies manipulating employees to stop them from resigning is something that exists in any country. And this escalating to the labor authorities or going through a lawyer is not a rare thing anywhere either.

It is? In what other countries are we talking about here where a company escalates to the labor authorities to prevent you from quitting? Usually this kind of thing is reserved to harass visa holders, not native workers.

They would absolutely do that if contracts would be stronger. But as they want to keep their ease of firing and laying off people, contracts are weak in both direction.

You're right, thanks for the correction.

I don't recall seeing examples in the US of directly preventing someone from resigning. But I have read about situations where companies make it harder to get the next job, essentially forcing someone to stay in a bad work situation. For example, non-competes for service jobs (fast-food, hairdressers, etc.)

I mean that the employees escalates it, not the companies.

For agricultural workers it is quite common with 'we safekeep your passport for you' and similar schemes.

I think foreign workers are more exploited in general but outside of the cities it is way harder to escape such employers.

> The agencies seem to have some legal powers that a normal person doesn't

I suspect the power that they have is actually knowing the law. Also by hiring one the employee has shown they are willing to hire a lawyer, so the employer can't bluff with legal threats. And very few employees are actually going to be worth the trouble to sue

And what do you think a broad non-compete clause is? The goal is the same, just the means are different.

The special powers are probably the following sentence: "sure, you could sue; also, we could check more closely for labor law violations; which would you like?".

Does a non-compete prevent you from leaving your current employer?

> And what do you think a broad non-compete clause is?

Pretty universally illegal. California doesn't have noncompete clauses at all. Texas, the state I'm most familiar with, doesn't allow them to be enforced except for skills that are proprietary to an employer, .e.g., supporting specific software in a specific way or something. Pretty sure most states that have them are the same. Making burgers isn't going to do it, and nobody would sue you over it anyway, they'd sue the new employer whose lawyers will know better.

I have had an employer try to get me to sign an illegal noncompete before, but that was because it was a small employer who didn't know the law. When I quit I politely informed him that it was unenforceable. He didn't try. That doesn't mean employers who know better don't try to intimidate employees, but they could just as easily threaten to break your kneecaps. Probably they won't.

A friend of mine recently went through the typical US process of interviewing while he was in a job (Always take the chance to say you're "tending to your elderly family" or some such in these situations) and landed a new position, though it would mean moving from Kyoto to outside Kumamoto.

This was at a Major Electronics Vendor that is known internationally and who produces... "Entertainment devices".

He walked up to his boss, handed his letter of resignation in, and was told "No, you're too critical to this project, I can't accept this." His response was to say "If I'm too critical to this project then you have failed in your duties as a manager, and it would be very inconvenient for you to have to admit that, so you're going to let me go or I'll make it Very Inconvenient for you by telling the whole team you think they're idiots and that the foreigner is the only reason this release will succeed."

He then didn't show up for a month (new job gave him enough time to take a nice, lengthy 3-month vacation to Korea and back) and his old boss kept calling and sms'ing him... On a number he only used for that job.

So is this practice in Japan, but it happens there just as overly broad non-competes happen in the west. And probably in both cases if you are a well informed person in a position with decent labour demand you can deal with that sort of a problem without much trouble yourself. But if you are in a much weaker position, then having some form of outside assistance available is invaluable.