The Moment Hank Received The Applause

By Patrick Hanna

To fully understand the Japanese labor market, readers will need to study other extensive and complex literature. Within the framework of this book, I will focus on Japanese workers involved in fields other than agriculture, employees working for companies or for individuals outside the family. The Japanese labor market is best understood throug

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick Hanna
• Release date: Feb 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869209078

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The Moment Hank Received The Applause

The Moment Hank Received The Applause

Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Hanna

All rights reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 : JOIN AND LEAVE THE COMPANY

CHAPTER 2 : DAWN PINAUD WAS II GIORNALE'S

CHAPTER 3 : BECAUSE THEN AS NOW

CHAPTER 4 : YOU ARE RIGHT TO THINK LIKE THIS

CHAPTER 5 : AND YOU PROBABLY

CHAPTER 1 : JOIN AND LEAVE THE COMPANY

This chapter and the next chapter of the book will mainly discuss members of a Japanese company, their behavior and attitudes. I would start by researching their entry and exit, because that is a very useful way to learn about a company's culture and operations. This research activity is not just a mechanical demographic survey. Japanese companies are a community of volunteers, a body of people who gather themselves to share common purposes, activities and common values. When a person joins or leaves a company, his actions imply a mental choice, expressing approval or disapproval of those values and indirectly expressing an opinion about him. Hiring, resignations and firings not only indicate the level of engagement of one person or the level of satisfaction of another but are also important indicators of the purposes and values of the company community.

An ethical issue that this research contributes to clarifying is the commitment between employer and employee. There is an opinion that in Japan, there is a phenomenon of employing people for life, first proposed by James C. Abegglen. At any level of an organization in Japan, workers always commit to devoting their lives to the company when hired. The company will not fire him, even temporarily, unless the circumstances require it. He will not leave this company to work for another company.

Working for life – to some extent it still exists in large Japanese companies – is not only the result of an almost absolute mental commitment, but also a commitment that requires traditional sources. Many people have written many works to refute, correct or endorse the thesis of Dr. Abegglen (1958). It is generally agreed that workers do indeed leave Japanese companies, even large ones, and it is also acknowledged that lifelong employment is not a relic of Traditional employment practices, despite the ideas involved in employing people for life and practices associated with it such as pay based on experience, are indeed related to the ideals of many people. ancient times in Japan. However, problems persist regarding what professors March and Mannari call norms and values. Does anyone think that there is employing people for life in Japanese companies – regardless of what happens in practice? Does anyone think it is necessary to employ people for life, and if so, under what conditions?

The second spiritual issue that comes to mind is the nature of authority in Japanese companies, an issue that appeared in the previous chapter and that I hope to study more closely in the next chapter. Joining the staff of a company means placing yourself under its authority. Hiring a person means assessing his willingness to obey. Leaving the company, depending on the circumstances, means rejecting the company's authority. Just having people leave the company also means limiting the discipline that the company can impose on that member.

Studying hiring and quitting practices not only provides clues about the nature of the corporate community, but also reveals information about the relationship between the company and society at large. When accepting or rejecting a person, a company implicitly comments on that person's role in society and at the same time demonstrates its behavior in the labor market, directly or indirectly influencing it. next to society. Corporate labor market policies may prompt or require changes in other important political and social institutions. For example, education systems may have to adjust the form of education to provide the labor market with people who match the recruitment requirements of companies; Social insurance plans will have to be drawn up to support companies' human resources.

At the same time, the company itself is influenced by society through the labor market. Changes in labor status indirectly cause changes in personnel policies and company structure; These changes also promote or threaten to promote changes in management methods, relationships between employees, and even the company's overall goals.

Much of the information provided about the hiring and firing practices of Japanese companies is based primarily on documents obtained in the Marumaru study. First, however, some details will be presented about the Japanese labor market, from which Marumaru, like other Japanese companies, hires and fires human employees.

Mobility and change in the labor market

To fully understand the Japanese labor market, readers will need to study other extensive and complex literature. Within the framework of this book, I will focus on Japanese workers involved in fields other than agriculture, employees working for companies or for individuals outside the family. The Japanese labor market is best understood through its employees and companies, not through jobs or skills. In Western labor markets, employers at many companies offer jobs with unique characteristics, hoping to attract skilled people. In Japan, there is also a very clear hierarchy of the labor market. However, in general, companies recruit multi-talented people, meaning their actual job is decided once they have joined the company and they can be transferred positions many times during the process. work there. In Japan, as we have seen, employee salaries go hand in hand with company size. Large companies often pay higher wages than small companies, partly because their productivity is higher with larger profits, and partly because in large companies, unions often work in the interests of employees. more positive.

Many girls find jobs after leaving school, work for a few years then quit. They tend to quit their jobs when they get married or have children because in Japan, prejudice against married women still working is very strong. This problem is reflected in the reluctance of large companies to recruit women who are pregnant or have families and young children. Women who still work after the age of 30 are often farmers or small family businesses. Some women stop working in their 20s and return to work in their late 30s after their children are grown. At that age, very few of them have the opportunity to pursue a career they love. Most people find a temporary job to earn extra income for their family, such as part-time jobs or working from home.

Of course, men's work patterns are not so directly affected by marriage and child rearing. Perhaps the most convenient way to discuss the labor market for men is to divide it into two parts: one is the primary labor market, in which graduates of schools and universities look for work. , and then there is the second labor market, made up of job changers.

In the first labor market for men (and for women), the advantage lies with high education on the one hand and large companies on the other. A high level of education is considered a passport into large companies with high salary prospects and greater security of long-term employment. A person who just left high school will have less chance of getting a job at a large company than someone who graduated from college or university. A person coming from a not very prestigious university will often have little chance of getting a job at a large bank. The education system can be seen as a recruitment mechanism for the labor market. Competition is fierce. Large companies offer better conditions than small companies. Small companies are rarely able to attract many people from the first market group and must rely mainly on job-hopping employees. Large employers have the ability to choose people with higher education from among many job applications while small employers, on the contrary, often do not have many options.

Actually, the labor market still lacks young workers with low education levels. Because the ratio of Japan's population by age has changed markedly in the past few decades. Both death rates and birth rates (except during the birth boom of 1946-1947) have fallen, and as a result, the population is getting older. In 1975, the labor market was smaller – specifically those aged 15 to 19 – compared to 1950, but the number of people over 65 more than doubled.

Not only has the number of young people able to enter the labor market gradually decreased since 1965, it shows that more and more young people are continuing their higher education, so they postpone looking for a job immediately after graduating. . Currently, about 90% of students leaving high school continue on to high school, leading to a sharp decline in the number of people leaving high school entering the labor market. Therefore, jobs that do not require too many skills that should only require high school graduates have to be given to people who leave high school with excess qualifications or to more mature and experienced workers. On the other hand, the number of university graduates entering the labor market is increasing very rapidly. The demand for highly educated workers has clearly increased, as industries requiring scientific and management skills have flourished, but new university graduates, unlike graduates, There is no shortage of middle and high schools.

Competition between companies in the primary labor market is likely to become even stronger, provided that the Japanese economy continues to grow. The aging of Japan's population also has other negative effects, especially recruitment activities, which will be recalled in the following sections.

The secondary market is created by job hoppers. As mentioned in the previous section, Japanese women often quit their jobs in their late 20s to take care of their families. However, while working, Japanese women also tend to constantly change jobs. Their job-hopping did not cause a major disruption due to the assumption that they would leave anyway. There are also many women who stick with a certain job for many years, however, that job is often a job in family companies.

What about the status of the secondary market for male labor? The advantage is, we can divide the rate of men quitting their jobs into two categories. The first is those who retire at a set age, usually over 55 years old. They receive a retirement benefit equivalent to about 3 years of salary, or a pension until death. Of course, they are too young to receive State subsidies and not well off enough to stay at home. Some will continue to be employed at the old company, with lower salaries. But there are also people who leave their old company completely to find a new job. Their income is not as high as before but at least enough to cover their living expenses. Many of them take some time off before being able to find a new job.

The second is the type of men who quit their jobs before the official retirement age. The rate at which younger, less educated workers leave the company is so high that it has become normal. According to statistics, the vast majority of people who quit their jobs before retirement want to change jobs instead of staying home or starting their own company. A 1975 survey found that just over half of the workers from the secondary labor market entering firms with more than 1,000 workers came from smaller firms with fewer than 100 workers. . Obviously, not everyone who quits their job has a difficult end. The younger a person is, the more likely they are to find a better job initially. Indeed, according to statistics, only people of retirement age receive less salary than their new job.

The pattern of men quitting their jobs, combined with patterns of pay differences by age and firm size, suggests that market forces are extremely diverse. People with lower wages, who are younger, with less education, and who work at smaller companies, leave their jobs for higher-paying, more suitable jobs. People who earn higher salaries, are older, and have less motivation to change often stay with their current job for a longer time. Like many other labor markets, the main driver of change in the Japanese labor market is mainly related to wages.

There are two objections to this explanation of why people quit their jobs at Japanese companies. First: quitting a job and finding a new job can be two completely separate actions, especially in Japan, where the job exchange system and job search agencies are not as developed as in other countries. Europe. A person can quit a low-paying job for a reason completely unrelated to salary, looking for a new job at a large and growing company that is willing to pay well. The mere fact that he moved from a low-paying job to a high-paying job does not mean that salary was the incentive for him to leave or that salary was not even a