Sharp lays off over 3,000 foreign workers in Japan
- HRM Asia Newsroom
- Topics: Asia-Pacific, Employee Experience, Home Page - News, Japan, News
More than 3,000 foreign temporary workers in Japan have been laid off by electronics manufacturer Sharp, as the company shifts its production of Apple’s iPhone sensors to a Chinese plant owned by Taiwan’s Foxconn, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.
The foreign workforce reduction comes despite the Japanese government’s initiatives to revise the immigration law and encourage more foreign blue-collar workers to Japan.
The Osaka-based company had ramped up the hiring of foreign workers at its Kameyama plant in western Japan last year, mostly of Japanese descent. This came after it won a contract to assemble sensor components for facial recognition features on the iPhone X, which went on sale in November 2017.
But as a result of the cuts, the number of temporary foreign workers on its payroll at the Kameyama plant has now fallen to between 500 and 600, from its peak of 4,000 in late 2017.
