Japanese workers turn to resignation agencies

So how is it the company can “refuse to let them quit” or “force” an employee to go to a temple? What is the actual enforcement mechanism other than guilt?

Withholding a letter of recommendation maybe? If the culture truly is such that you get a job in your early 20s and stay there until you retire or die, then presumably a job seeker in their 30s would be virtually unhireable without a good explanation.

Japanese companies have some culture of bullying and harassment. The laws against it are limited and enforcement is toothless. But yeah, it's mostly ultimately a lack of courage from the employees in question.

If it's this bad you would think that you would be outright unhireable if you left an employer.

In that case, I don't think Resignation Agencies could help to get them to spit out letter of recommendation.

But the again - these agencies might be solving an entirely different problem.

It’s definitely illegal, labor rights are pretty strong in Japan. I think your typical Japanese person is just very compliant when faced with an uncomfortable situation and bad bosses abuse that dynamic.

You need proof of layooff (離職票) to collect you unemployment benefits. It is illegal not to issue one, but it is possible for the company can cause you some pain in issuing it.

Do you get unemployment benefits in Japan even if you quit?

> It’s definitely illegal, labor rights are pretty strong in Japan.

In some ways they are. Notably Japan has no concept of constructive dismissal, and companies have a pretty broad right to assign work and even to assign someone to work at a faraway office. There may be some anti-harassment law on the books, but it's very hard to get anything recognised under it, and if someone is just constantly assigned bad work, or no work, they have very little recourse.

And even if you could win a lawsuit, Japan doesn't do punitive damages or damages for emotional distress. So you'd be able to claim, maybe, lost wages for your time out of work, and... that's probably it.

Labor rights are far stronger in Japan than countries like the US, but like regulations everywhere, are only as strong as they are actively enforced, where companies suffer meaningful penalties for violating them. Japan is by no means a place where this is true, such that companies fear violating them.

Apart from the paperwork that you need to pass on to your next employer, salaries can be structured in a way that makes the base pay rather low, but the yearly income is boosted up to a reasonable level by bonuses, overtime allowance (fixed monthly amount paid whether you work the overtime or not), etc. If the company doesn't want to let someone quit, they can make it financially painful by withholding these things, or subtracting "damages" caused by the employee leaving.

EDIT: Come to think of it I'm actually not 100% sure about the legality of this, but they sure try it!

They can reduce or plain not pay your bonus, yeah. But making the employee pay for "damages", even by subtracting them from remaining pay or bonuses, is very very illegal.

Yes, but only after 3 months without a new job as opposed to immediately if laid off.

The problem is these companies are comfortable with this level of illegal, because they're multiplying potential fines by the odds the employee will actually go to the authorities, and then weighing that against the exploitation benefits multiplied by their whole workforce.