SNA (Tokyo) — Yesterday, I went to a hair salon to get coloring. The stylist was a good-looking early-thirties woman with perfect make-up and nails. She manipulated her craft with great efficiency yet great care. Standing and without ever resting her hands for even a moment for ninety minutes, she even made sure to relax me with friendly chat throughout. I had heard of stylists suffering occupational hazards such as lower back pain from standing all day as well as skin irritation on their hands from dyes and perming solutions. It’s indeed hard labor. Let me share a bit of our chat:

“I’m a freelancer at this salon. So, it’s very important that I get repeat clients.”

“Huh? You work freelance? I assumed you were an employee of the salon.”

“More and more beauty salons are messing up people’s working styles these days. I am a freelancer. My previous salon employed me, but the work hours were so long, and wages were ultra-low when I was just an assistant. It was really tough. Now, I’m freelance and have more flexibility, so it’s much easier.”

“Is that so? That’s good if it’s easier for you.”

“Yes, on the other hand, I get no paid leave, no overtime, and no accident insurance. I have to pay for everything myself. I get paid when I get work, but nothing when there is no work. It’s a pretty tough world. In a sense, my trade is one based on personal popularity, like hostesses. But it’s worth fighting for. So, please pick me next time too. I will be in the salon up until the last train at night.”

She smiled broadly as she gave me her last pitch.

I couldn’t help having serious doubts about her claim that freelancing has made her life easier. The beauty industry had long been criticized as a hotbed of blacklist company-style employment practices, with long overtime, ultra-low wages for assistants, and human rights violations reminiscent of the abuses traditionally suffered by apprentices.

The late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made ending long work hours the number one slogan of his workplace reform banner. His actual program offered modest substance, but I suppose he did at least make corporations begin to be aware of the need to reduce work hours.

Thus, a more accurate appraisal of my stylist’s shift from employment to freelance is that the beauty industry has begun to take care not to be accused of imposing long work hours. However, increasing gig jobs cannot solve the fundamental problem of long work hours. Such contracts deprive workers of their rights under labor law and places all responsibility on the worker herself.

This was once seen by Japanese as an abusive work style, but the word freelance has worked its magic to disguise its abusive nature.

Whether the stylist falls ill, gets pregnant, or needs to take care of sick family members, the salon has zero obligation. The freelancer is completely on her own, atomized, alienated in her toil. The salon is liberated from the many obligations it once had as employer, free from those pesky extra costs associated with nuisances like insurance and labor rights.

Many people glamorize gig jobs. Freelancing conjures images of being free from corporate shackles, free to be one’s true self and to work on one’s own terms. But this is a trap. The “freedom” of freelancing is not freedom for the worker, but rather freedom for capital to shirk its otherwise mandatory obligations to provide for the welfare of its employees.

Japan had over 4.6 million gig workers (freelancers) as of May 2020, according to a Cabinet Secretariat survey. The number is growing in many different industries. The government has devised no plan nor any concrete measures to deal with the growing gig economy.

Although these gig workers work just like “regular” workers do, they lose all their rights when corporations invoke the magic word “freelance.” The gigification of labor is advancing on all fronts and it should plant the fear in our hearts that the gains which previous generations of workers around the world struggled to achieve for over a century, for which many bled and died, is now slipping away.

That said, one recent court case provided a glimmer of light.

On May 25, the Tokyo District Court ruled in favor of a 27-year-old freelance writer who suffered sexual harassment from her boss. She wrote blog articles for an aesthetic salon in Tokyo. A manager touched her and sought sex with her. When she refused his advances, he refused to pay ¥380,000 (US$2,700) in remunerations. The court ordered him to pay that sum plus an additional ¥1.5 million (US$10,700) as compensation for mental suffering.

The verdict deemed the manager’s repeated actions as constituting sexual harassment and his refusal to pay the remuneration as a form of power harassment. The judge also recognized the company’s “obligation to give due consideration” to safety at the workplace.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Act requires employers to take measures to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. Article 5 of the Labor Contract Act compels an employer “to give the necessary consideration to enable a worker to work while ensuring their physical safety.” These articles exclude gig workers, freelancers, and “independent contractors.”

This case involved a company that was not an employer, but rather a business partner to the aesthetician, and this is what makes the court judgment so noteworthy. The verdict implicated both the harasser himself as well as the corporation which paid the victim. Why did the court include the obligation to take care of the safety of the worker? The court did not recognize her as an employee per se, but rather that her position was such that she provided labor to the defendant corporation and was under their effective control in a manner similar to a worker under a boss.

This interpretation places her a mere thread’s breadth away from employee status. I agree with this verdict and I hope it sends a clear message to freelancers and other gig workers that they can confront harassment and unfair treatment at the workplace in the knowledge that they can make a successful claim based on the law.

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