" 吉野家「外国籍の方の採用に関して説明が不足」と謝罪　新卒採用で「予約を一方的にキャンセルされた」との批判受け" 6 May 2022

[Japanese-to-English translation: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre ]

A tweet by a man about the beef bowl chain Yoshinoya has gone viral, claiming that when he booked to attend a company information session regarding recruitment for new graduates, he was unilaterally cancelled due to his foreign citizenship.

[...]

The tweet also included an image of what appeared to be an email from the company, in which the company stated that "it is very difficult for foreign nationals to obtain a work visa, and even if you have a chance and receive a job offer, there is a possibility that you may not be able to join the company", regarding the cancellation of the booking due to foreign nationality.

[...]

A spokesperson for Yoshinoya explained to Bengo4.com News:

'We continue to actively promote foreign national employees with the aim of revitalising our organisation, and we primarily employ them on the basis of medium- to long-term training as future executive candidates, regardless of their nationality. Therefore, the conditions for employment are based on the acquisition of a visa due to technical, humanities or international work, which we consider to be most in line with this policy.

However, it is very difficult to obtain a visa for technical, humanities or international work, and to a certain extent we have had to cancel offers of employment. In consideration of the emotional impact on those who were unable to obtain a visa and had their job offers cancelled, we were forced to decline the participation of foreign nationals who applied for company information sessions for new graduates."

Although there was no direct reference to the content of the tweet, the spokesperson said: 'Although this was the reason, there was a lack of explanation regarding the recruitment of foreign nationals in our company. In addition, we should have contacted those who were thought to be foreign nationals first based on the application information, but there were deficiencies in the process of contacting them" and added: "We sincerely apologise for this. In the future, we will strive to make our recruitment activities easier to understand for applicants".