Posted on 05/20/2009 4:57:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
OSAKA, Japan — When the sheet metal orders coming into his small business, High Metal, fell by half last October, it never occurred to Masaaki Taruki to lay off his workers.
Instead, he set about brainstorming new projects to occupy them. An indoor vegetable garden? A handicrafts workshop?
Because of government subsidies, Mr. Taruki in the last three months installed rows of parsley, watercress and other plants, using factory space that has been empty since the company disposed of unused machinery. High Metal’s staff tend the sprouts religiously, topping up the water supply, adding fertilizer and adjusting the fluorescent lights.
When sales at the machinery maker Shinano Kogyo in central Japan plunged some 70 percent late last year, the company started dispatching its idle workers to sweep the streets and pick up trash in the wider community, while remaining on the payroll.
According to statistics released Wednesday, the Japanese economy suffered its worst contraction since 1955 in the first quarter, declining 15.2 percent on an annualized basis. But a far smaller portion of workers have lost their jobs in Japan than in either the United States or the European Union. (Japan’s unemployment rate in April was 4.8 percent, compared with 8.9 percent in United States and Europe.)
Analysts say this is because lifetime employment is alive and well in Japan, with the state playing big role in keeping it so.
“Job tenure in Japan remains remarkably long,” said Peter Matanle, expert on Japanese employment at University of Sheffield in Britain. “Companies get rid of the buffers first. They’ll get rid of temporary workers, reduce overtime, reduce bonuses. They would squeeze their suppliers. They would do anything before considering cutting regular workers.”
But Japan’s obsession with keeping workers employed — even those who are not needed — comes at a cost.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Companies slash wages, which reduces consumer spending. Businesses become more reluctant to take on new recruits, shutting young people out of the labor force. And productivity plummets, hurting Japan’s competitiveness in an increasingly aggressive international market.
Could you imagine the UAW Union Leadership agreeing to having idle workers sweeping the streets of Detroit?
green jobs
or going out into orchards and tying little bags around each fruit to protect it from insects and sun scald? (have seen this in Korea and presume they do it in Japan)
or maybe the UAW guys could massage beef cattle to tenderize their beef and give the One a steady supply of wagyu
And a similar headline can be found about “record plunge” in the US.
Both economic approaches are taking it in the shorts at the moment, the protectionist and the globalist.
“Job tenure in Japan remains remarkably long,” . . . “They’ll get rid of temporary workers,”
Hmm . . . It sounds like if you have tenure. you have tenure. I never have understood this stuff.
The globalist approach is proving to be a disaster. We protectionists are being proved right after all.
LOL! If you willingly ignore the fact that the Japanese economy has been mired in recession and deflation for the last 20 years you can make yourself believe just about anything. This article makes clear that the protectionist policies of Japan have been a disaster for the country.
They probably work only minutes walk away from my old apartment in Higashi Osaka.
Well, I’m not a protectionist per se, I do believe there should be a more equitable trade policy but not slam the door shut altogether.
Japan is the opposite case, a dose of free trade is just what the Economist ordered for their economy as it’s moribound and has been for years.
I don’t know, but if they did, it would cause no harm.
well, neither the export and save (see Japan and Germany) nor the import and spend (see U.S. and U.K.) model is working particularly well right now. We’re all in the same co-dependency trouble, just coming from two different directions.
>> Could you imagine the UAW Union Leadership agreeing to having idle workers sweeping the streets of Detroit? <<
They would only sweep for the first day, the rest of the week they would be looting because that is all they know how to do!
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