This article is about the continuous abuse of Japanese students through black companies (ブラック企業) and black jobs (ブラックバイト) in Japan
Over the past decades, workplace abuse in Japan has been seen on several occasions. More recent events have lead to the formation of a new term for these sort of jobs. The term is "ブラックバイト" or "Black Job". It is a word that was partially adopted from German "Schwarz Arbeit" but in Japan it has a very different meaning than in Germany.
"Black Jobs" in Japan can be seen as an extension of the already popular term "ブラック企業" or “Black Company”. The concept of Black Companies is similar to black jobs. In the case of black companies, the company would hire a large amount of young workers and then make them work overtime without payment.
The difference between "Black Jobs" and “Black Companies” is that black jobs refer to part time jobs while black companies refers to full time jobs.
※ Baito (バイト) is a Japanese term that refers to part time jobs.
The nature in Black Jobs lies in overtime. A young employee has to do a certain job in a certain time frame. The trick here is that the job CAN NOT be done within the time limits. The young employee then proceeds to do extra time by his own will in order to get the job done. Of course, he doesn't get paid for his overtime hours.
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These unpaid overtimes vary in length. They can go from 15 minutes up to an hour and above.
Usually, the employer knows that the employee is a student. But the Employer doesn't care about the student's studies.
Common cases of Black Jobs are "minimum sales". A worker has to sale a minimum number of Products within his or her shift even if they have to work more hours to do so. The problem in all this is that students don't know their rights.
Overall students are in a disadvantage because tuitions are getting more expensive while students are left with less money to live.
Bigger companies are not offering Black Jobs anymore due to media coverage but smaller companies that offer black jobs still remain.