Lawson Hires Foreigners

Japanese convenience store chain Lawson has announced that about 10% of the new employees it hires in its main offices next year will be foreigners:

Lawson Inc said Friday it has decided to employ 10 foreign students graduating next spring as regular members of staff and aims to hire more in the future. The nation’s second-largest convenience store chain operator hopes to utilize the new foreign recruits’ work skills in supervising the increasing number of its foreign part-time staff and expanding its overseas operations.

The 10 newly recruited foreigners consist of nine Chinese students and one Vietnamese national. They will enjoy the same terms of employment as the 90 or so Japanese workers due to join Lawson’s work force next spring when they assume supervisory positions, the company said. Lawson’s new employment policy has been devised also amid the need to expand its business in other Asian countries, whose economies are growing rapidly.

It’s not rare to see foreigners working part-time at convenience stores, but this is the first effort I’ve heard about that actively hires non-Japanese for higher positions in the konbini business.