林業労働への新規参入と林業労働者像

Abstract

Decreasing number and aging of workers are one of the most critical problems that Japanese forestry has been facing recent years. Ryujin Village Forestry Cooperatives, which is famous for its various forest related activity, in Wakayama Prefecture has begun to recruit young workers mainly for logging from urban population since 1992. This paper aims to research preferable conditions for recruiting new forestry workers, and to consider future prospect of forestry workers by analyzing questionnaire for old and young workers in the Cooperative. Twenty of old workers, who are daily waged and 58.6 years in average, and seventeen of young workers, who are monthly salaried and 32.2 years in average, responded to the questionnaire. In some questions, e.g. about the reasons for becoming forestry workers or satisfaction with their salary, answers of two groups differ a lot. While in other questions, e.g. about the reasons for shortage of forestry workers or the future of Japanese forestry, answers of two groups are quite similar. We can find some interesting characteristics of newly entered workers. The following three points are resulted from the analysis as the necessary condition for recruiting new forestry workers: (1) Providing reasonable salary and social security, based on financial stability of the organization. (2) Sending information about forestry to urban population continuously, and making them understand the reality of the job and rural life. (3) Active recruit practices in urban area, and providing comfort environment for new comers.