Japan Struggles To Popularize a Four-Day Workweek (businessinsider.com) 66
Notorious for a hardworking culture, Japan launched an initiative to help people cut back. But three years into the effort, the country is having a hard time coaxing people to take a four-day workweek. From a report: Japanese lawmakers first proposed a shorter work week in 2021. The guidelines aimed to encourage staff retention and cut the number of workers falling ill or dying from overwork in an economy already suffering from a huge labor shortage. The guidelines also included overtime limits and paid annual leave. However, the initiative has had a slow start: According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, only about 8% of companies in Japan allow employees to take three or more days off a week.
It's not just companies -- employees are hesitant, too. Electronics manufacturer Panasonic, one of Japan's largest companies, opted into the effort in early 2022. Over two years in, only 150 of its 63,000 eligible employees have chosen to take up four-day schedules, a representative of the company told the Associated Press. Other major companies to introduce a four-day workweek include Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, electronics giant Hitachi, and financial firm Mizuho. About 85% of employers report giving workers the usual two days off a week. Much of the reluctance to take an extra day off boils down to a culture of workers putting companies before themselves, including pressure to appear like team players and hard workers. This intense culture stems from Japan's postwar era, where, in an effort to boost the economy, then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida enlisted major corporations to offer their employees lifelong job security, asking only that workers repay them with loyalty.
It's not just companies -- employees are hesitant, too. Electronics manufacturer Panasonic, one of Japan's largest companies, opted into the effort in early 2022. Over two years in, only 150 of its 63,000 eligible employees have chosen to take up four-day schedules, a representative of the company told the Associated Press. Other major companies to introduce a four-day workweek include Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, electronics giant Hitachi, and financial firm Mizuho. About 85% of employers report giving workers the usual two days off a week. Much of the reluctance to take an extra day off boils down to a culture of workers putting companies before themselves, including pressure to appear like team players and hard workers. This intense culture stems from Japan's postwar era, where, in an effort to boost the economy, then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida enlisted major corporations to offer their employees lifelong job security, asking only that workers repay them with loyalty.
Why is Business Insider suddenly behind a paywall? (Score:3)
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You shouldn't care. Much of it is just propaganda, and the owner of the newspaper supposedly has ties with US intelligence agencies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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You shouldn't care. Much of it is just propaganda, and the owner of the newspaper supposedly has ties with US intelligence agencies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Most media brands are just names these days. Business Insider hasn't been about business in many years. It's basically Gawker now with the occasional business story.
The same thing happened to a whole slew of media brands when magazines died. Teen Vogue, which used to be about fashion for teen girls, is now basically a place for Jezebel writers to rant about abortion and anal sex. The titles basically ignore the mission and history of the brand, and just print random salacious crap now. When the old print mo
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LOL that's funny. As if anyone would ever PAY for a subscription to the business insider trash rag.
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Japan, or its workers? (Score:2)
Get back to work you lazy fools. Make me some money before I replace you with robots.
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Sounds to me like they're too far gone - they have nothing to go home to. The office is their home and their co-workers are their family, such as it is.
Been nice knowing you, postwar Japan.
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Hence why their population is in a dive.
America is doing the same thing. You have to work 70-80 hours a week to get by you dont have enough time left for personal stuff. Thats called capitalism.
Re: Japan, or its workers? (Score:2)
I mean the genetically engineered cat girls are promising but they're still in the development phase.
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When has Japan not been pro-robot?
I mean the genetically engineered cat girls are promising but they're still in the development phase.
Developing phase?
I hear that's how they like 'em!
Re: Japan, or its workers? (Score:2)
Weird work culture (Score:5, Informative)
I lived in Japan for a few years. It was odd to see people sitting at their desks playing video games because it's taboo to leave before the boss, while the boss is sitting in his office wasting time because he doesn't want his employees to see him leaving too early and think he's a slacker.
It's all very dysfunctional. Seniority and loyalty count more than performance.
Productivity (output per employee-hour) in Japan is 35% lower than in America.
It only applies to office workers though (Score:2, Insightful)
The advantage to working people that long and hard is it keeps wages down because you create an oversupply of labor. The labor is of lower quality but you don't care because the overall effect on the labor market means you still come out ahead.
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The diminishing returns kick in at about 30 hours. 40 was just what labour unions managed to negotiate long ago, it wasn't based on how to get peak productivity from people.
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Of course the goal of maximizing per-worker productivity isn't necessarily aligned with the goal of minimizing the cost to employers. Keeping wages low isn't exactly good for a country but it is good for the top
Re: Weird work culture (Score:2)
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They promote primarily on seniority, ... and generally don't promote based on competence.
It's common in Japan for a company to be run by a "super-secretary" while her incompetent boss sits in his office drinking tea.
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In other words, it's less about actual work output, and more ab
Re:Huge labor shortage (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently they don't really have a shortage of labour, they have an excessive expectation of time spent at work. Adjust that and (eventually) you should see some people freed up and able to take other positions. Certainly you'll see fewer people dropping from stress... the dead don't do very much work at all.
More importantly, maybe if you can get people to have more personal time, they'll use it to produce at least a few more babies and slow Japan's demographic free-fall.
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I think everyone can see this, even the Japanese government. The problem is, how do you change the culture?
Changing a society's culture is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier ... that's towing two other aircraft carriers.
Re:Huge labor shortage (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is, how do you change the culture?
Change the culture by changing the law.
Unpaid overtime should be banned, with hefty fines for violators.
Any work over 40 hours a week should be time-and-a-half, even for salaried workers.
You'll see offices clearing out at 5 pm the day after the law passes the Diet.
Emotion and tradition over evidence and logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously - look at the work culture, realize it's one of the things literally destroying the country, and then legislate change.
For instance, legislate a 40 hour standard work week, mandatory OT past that up to 50 hours, then make more more illegal. Make 'on call' count as quarter-time or something, in addition to double-time if there's an actual callout. Companies will adjust by hiring more people (if there is actually work needing to be done and not just 'sit in your seat for the expected period of time').
Legislate not the right to disconnect, but mandatory disconnection. Don't let companies contact workers outside of regular work hours.
Legislate hard limits on work 'socials'. Allow a company party for one or two major holiday occasions or an annual meeting or whatever, but no frequent visits to bars with superiors.
Brand it all as for the glory of the Japanese people and their culture. There will be no struggle once the legislation is in place unless there are loopholes left to exploit and allow companies a path to maintaining the old work culture.
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It's not that the problem can't be solved or that the culture can't be changed. As you have noted, it can.
They simply won't.
The stupidity is not that they don't recognize the problem--after all, it's been staring them in the fcking face for decades, steadily eroding away at their quality of life. And it's not like they don't know what the solutions are, because again, as you pointed out, it can be forced. It's just that the actual willpower to do anything is nonexistent. There's a fear that too much cha
Re:Emotion and tradition over evidence and logic (Score:4, Interesting)
To bring it closer to home, consider this: immigration is good for America economically.
Now, because of American culture, I expect that something like half the people reading this are ready to lynch me. So I'd like to direct you to a piece by a liberal think tank ... the George W. Bush Presidential Center, "Benefits of Immigration Outweigh the Costs": https://www.bushcenter.org/cat... [bushcenter.org]
And if you ask most serious economists they'll tell you the same thing: while there might be some short-term hiccups when a whole bunch of immigrants show up at once, in the long run, throughout history, immigration is good for countries.
But because of politics, our culture has come to demonize immigrants (and to be fair, America is far from alone in this). My point being, it's similar to how Japan would clearly benefit from a change in work culture, but doesn't.
America overall would clearly benefit from letting more immigrants in ... so why don't our politicians just do it?
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>To bring it closer to home, consider this: immigration is good for America economically.
Slightly (but not completely) off topic... That's a matter of time.
In the short term, yes, immigration is good because the economy is designed around each generation being larger than the one preceding it. Cease growing the population and the standard of living for the older generations will crash.
In the long term, no, immigration is bad because you're just cramming more and more people into the same space, reducing
Re: Emotion and tradition over evidence and logic (Score:2)
That assumes there's a fixed size pie and more immigrants means less pie to go around. In general, immigration grows the economy so the immigrants aren't taking anything from those who came before.
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The pie is very definitely fixed size. New immigrants do not create more land or more natural resources, they only increase labour and demand.
If you have big enough supplies of land and resources their finite nature can be ignored for a time, but every additional body is shrinking the per capita share of both.
Re: Emotion and tradition over evidence and logic (Score:3)
The US has way more than enough land. What natural resources are immigrants using up to the extent there's no longer enough to go around?
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They all move into the one town, increasing the demand of everything beyond the capacity of existing infrastructure, causing said infrastructure to break and reduce everyone's quality of life. Because they're surrounded by people just like them, they refuse to assimilate, bringing the problems of their own culture to their new homeland: Now, the host country has 4 times the crime and corruption.
Immigration is not a pot of sunshine and rainbows: Change must be managed and failure to do so, results in as
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but there's only a surplus of people because they're still suffering, but as they become a developed country down their fertility rate will go as well, and all the developed countries are showing no signs of their fertility rate bottoming. immigration might be good for the country's economy, but if your citizens stop having children that's probably a sign that something is not working.
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We know what that something is. The cost of living is too high, particularly housing. You need a larger home to have children, and we keep telling people not to have them if they can't afford them.
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Politicians *are* just doing it. If you look at the UK, over the last 20 or so years the population has consistently voted for the party that has promised to cut immigration, and then no matter who they voted for, it's gone up and up. That's really a good portion of what Brexit was about, even if the newspapers don't like to talk about it. The thing is, it's supposed to be a democracy, so if the people want less immigration, and that's what they're voting for, I can understand why they're frustrated that
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And if you ask most serious economists they'll tell you the same thing: while there might be some short-term hiccups when a whole bunch of immigrants show up at once, in the long run, throughout history, immigration is good for countries.
No... immigration is good for the *economy*.... just by the definition that it increases demand for goods and services and thus overall GDP. This, however, does not mean that it's good for the country or that an economy depending on growth is sustainable or healthy.
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America overall would clearly benefit from letting more immigrants in ... so why don't our politicians just do it?
It decreases the immediate cost of labor if you have a large illegal workforce. The workers can't complain because they are illegal.
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In the wake of the Fukushima triple meltdown, the government tried to encourage people to save energy on air conditioning by wearing more appropriate clothes to work. One minister did a stunt where he went to his office in a Hawaiian shirt, to illustrate the point.
The government prefers not to legislate, it prefers to negotiate with employers. But it doesn't work in some instances, although it's been successful elsewhere. Every year the government negotiates pay rises with industry, a bit like a union, for
But if people don't die from overwork, (Score:2)
where will the idea of all those Japanese novels and manga (where the hero/heroine dies and takes a job in a fantasy world) go?
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Don't worry about it - they'll just get killed when a pile of books falls onto them [wikipedia.org].
Data to the rescue? (Score:2)
How can you change behavior? It can be mandated for a little while, with enough effort. But you need to change their thinking to make them want to change behavior happily. Find the reasons they won't and change them.
Force a group to try it, and start recording what happens? If it goes well, share that. If it goes poorly, find solutions? With the biggest problem I initially see as getting honest data/results if most things are self reported rather than objective measurements.
But it does pay to realize
It's almost as if... (Score:2)
...workers in Japan don't want to work four-day weeks. Having 0.2% of eligible workers sign up for the program kinda tells us it wasn't even close. It's also almost as if workers realize or fear there will be negative consequences for working 20% fewer hours, such as 20% less pay or 20% more stress. Given the stereotype of salarymen working themselves to death, I don't think I want a more stressful job.
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It's also almost as if workers realize or fear there will be negative consequences for working 20% fewer hours, such as 20% less pay or 20% more stress.
It's almost like that, but it's really like the workers fear that the negative consequence will be getting fired for not being a good cog.
Could be worse (Score:2)
dying from overwork
You could work at Wells Fargo and die at your desk [slashdot.org] and not be noticed for 4 days ...
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dying from overwork
You could work at Wells Fargo and die at your desk [slashdot.org] and not be noticed for 4 days ...
To be fair, two of those were weekend days when nobody was in the office.
Easy PTO? (Score:2)
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Not unusable; there are plenty of jobs that may need a certain amount of throughput per year but don't particularly matter on any given day, and some of those have unnecessarily poor work/life balance; but definitely more
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Functionally there isn't a difference between personally notifying everyone you will be taking off, and having the computer notify everyone on your behalf. If you are extremely awkward it might save you from a few seconds of face-to-face social interaction, but when your boss (or whoever) gets notified by the computer, they will have the same reaction as if you typed the message yourself.
As far as having your PTO specified numerically on a sheet of paper, I vastly prefer that to the "unmetered", "flexible P
7-day workweek (Score:2, Interesting)
Bring it back .. I am serious. This is a non-trolling post. Work 7 days a week, uninterrupted .. get real shit, I'm talking achievement-level shit you can be proud of, super-done. Then take family (or better yet, friends) on a fat 4 month extended vacation (104 days + 4 weeks) . How many people have had 4 month vacations (being unemployed doesn't count)? It's next level. Imagine doing that every year.
Re: 7-day workweek (Score:4)
Work eight months straight without a break? No thanks.
Re: 7-day workweek (Score:5, Funny)
You get a break every day to sleep and eat. Is that not enough for you??
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After all it's "next level" shit right? Why aren't YOU doing it? And no, "I'm old" or "I served my time" doesn't count. Get your ass back out there. You aren't giving anyone else a break except for food and sleep, (and we all know both of those can be reduced further), so you shouldn't expect anyone else to give you
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Yikes - you missed the sarcasm. Perhaps it was too subtle, and I'm sorry for causing the adrenaline rush that caused you to reply in the way you did.
And, yes, my low UID is legit.
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Work eight months straight without a break? No thanks.
And it's even worse from a business perspective. How do you distribute the work knowing that half your workforce is going to be off for a quarter of the year? A 4 day week is easy as you can get people working either M-T and T-F to make sure you're covered for the 5 day working week as a lot of businesses pay to run 24/7 so have some people working Sun-Thurs and others Tue-Sat with a loading for working the weekend,
Also everyone will want to take their 4 months off at the same time, Summer/Spring. Few is
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I am serious. This is a non-trolling post.
You have never been serious, so you have never made a non-trolling post.
Even if you are genuine, you have not applied logic to your proposal, so it is not serious by definition. You are seriously a troll, however.
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I specifically specified that it's non-trolling.
Japan vs. Greece (Score:2)
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Japan is rich AF, Greece has been looted by every neighbor throughout history and by some in particular even recently, and then had austerity WHICH DOES NOT WORK AND NEVER WORKS imposed upon it by external governments. The most important differences are not cultural.
It's for looks, not reality (Score:2)
I worked in Japan for a while, and with a Japanese team when I was stateside, and they've got a messed up work culture.
Someone above has already noted that you're expected to come in before and leave after the next senior employee. They have to as well, etc. The workers (and sometimes their direct manager) like to leave as a group too; where I was, it was to go directly to a bar for snacks and drinks. Daily.
But that's not their work, that's just why they stay so long and don't go home.
Here's an example of w
First they need to make it known (Score:2)
Never heard of it
No poster
No TV "ad" in the news
Nothing
So ... it basically doesn't exist.
Didn't we have some "early drinking friday" bollocks anyway ?