Wrote Dan:
>I'll have to disagree with you here and agree with Lars. The fact is
>that until very recently, the Japanese companies typically offer their
>employees the equivalent of "life-time employment". A company would
>hire someone fresh out of school and train that person for position(s)
>within that company -- if a job disappears, the employee is trained
>for a different position, all within the company -- until the employee
>retires. The concept of quitting one company and joining another is
>a very recent phenomenon.
This has been true -- for one segment of the Japanese labour market,
i.e. the big companies. Then there is another big segment, in which
labour conditions have been even more arbitrary and insecure than
they are in the West, even in the U.S. where organized labour has
traditionally been much weaker than in Europe. The people who
are in casual employment or work in small "three tatami enterprises"
have a very precarious existence. And social security seems to be
quite deficient. Japan is paying heavily for that deficiency now, when
those who have money save it for a rainy day instead of spending
it, leading to a fall of purchasing power and a shrinking economy.
Hälsningar/Regards
Lars Bergquist
Timberwolf Type, the independent
specialist in text typefaces - visit me at
<http://www.timberwolf.a.se/>
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