Make employers pay a pay premium and an end-of-contract payment for fixed-term hiring, so they cover the cost of the insecurity
In short
- When employers hire people on fixed-term contracts or through staffing agencies, they pay a premium on top of wages.
- When a contract ends, the employer always pays an end-of-contract payment based on how long the person worked.
- Insecure hiring stops being cheap hiring, so employers have a different reason for choosing it.
- The more an employer strings the same person along on short contracts, the heavier the premium gets.
If this comes true
A young father who sorted goods in a warehouse on a three-month contract uses the payment he got when it ended to pick his next job without rushing, and he now goes to classes for an electrician's license.
Perhaps
A small seaside inn that can no longer hire people on short contracts might get through the busy summer with only the family and start turning away reservations.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This proposal covers every kind of hiring where the end date is set in advance: contracts with a fixed term, work through staffing agencies, and work hired by the day or week. Employers who hire this way must pay a set percentage on top of the wages of people doing the same job on open-ended employment. The percentage is not the same for everyone. It is higher the shorter the contract is, and it rises step by step the more an employer links the same person's short contracts one after another. When a contract ends, whatever the reason for not renewing it, the employer also pays an end-of-contract payment based on how long the person worked. If the person is moved to open-ended employment, the premium and the payment stop from then on. If there is no open-ended worker at the workplace to compare with, the standard wage for that line of work is used as the yardstick. Exceptions are limited to cases where the term is set by the worker's own circumstances, such as students working only during a long break or short jobs that are part of job training, and even then the premium is only made lighter, not removed. The level of the percentage is reviewed regularly in a public body that includes representatives of workers and of employers. Employers who break the rules are ordered to pay the difference, and workers can claim it going back into the past.
BenefitsThose who use the flexibility pay its price
Short contracts stop being the cheap choice for employers. This is the biggest change. For truly temporary work, such as a seasonal rush or filling a sudden gap, it still makes sense to hire for a short time even with the premium. But in workplaces that have kept stacking short contracts to get ongoing work done cheaply, hiring on an open-ended basis becomes the better deal, and the switch happens naturally. Because the change comes through price rather than a ban, the situations where flexibility is truly needed remain. For workers, the end of a contract is no longer a cliff for their income. With an end-of-contract payment, they can get through the weeks until the next job without rushing into a bad one out of panic. The premium also makes up for not getting training or raises. Employers start finding ways to help even short-term workers learn the job quickly, and the habit of using people up and throwing them away weakens. Because the weight of the premium rises with repeated renewals, contracts that are fixed-term in name only also stop paying off.
DrawbacksThe way in narrows, and people with little experience are shut out
The heaviest cost is the risk that the way into work gets narrower. Short contracts were also a way in for young people with no experience and people who had not worked for a long time, a chance to be hired on a trial basis. If that way in gets a premium price tag, employers will choose only people who seem sure to work out, and people with gaps in their work history or people not confident in the language could be put at the back of the line. For businesses with little strength to spare, such as small shops, farms, and inns in tourist areas, whose sales change greatly with the seasons, the premium and the payment become a plain burden, and some will give up hiring or close down. Employers may also try to escape the system itself, by putting in machines in place of people or by handing work to outside contractors or sole proprietors. If that happens, the very people the proposal meant to protect are pushed into ways of working with even less protection. Also, in some workplaces, raises for open-ended workers will be held down by the amount of the employers' added burden. Making employers pay for insecurity comes at the price of reducing someone's chance of being hired.
Learn the background
In many countries, workers are split into two layers. One layer is hired without a set end date, is protected from dismissal, and can get raises and training. The other has contracts that run out every few months, is paid less for the same work, and never knows when the next job will disappear. The second layer has many young people, people returning to work after raising children, and people who have moved in from elsewhere, and they are the first to lose work when the economy turns bad. This divide does not go away because short contracts are "flexible and also cheap" for employers. The flexibility of being able to end things at any time is something that benefits the employer, yet the worry that comes with it falls on the worker. In today's system, though, the people who carry the worry are paid less. Workers in the protected layer and labor unions have not pushed hard for change either, because their own security is partly supported by the insecure layer. There have been attempts to urge more open-ended hiring and to ban insecure hiring, but if it is banned, employers hold back from hiring at all, and mere urging does not change who gains or loses. Unless the direction of the price is reversed, the way people are chosen will not change.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23b) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes