FARK Discovers karoshi

[Catoneinutica]

Our friends at FARK.com weigh in on the subject of working for J-companies:

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2590143

Some choice quotes:

"I've actually worked in a Japanese company where nothing but Japanese was spoken. I only did it for the work experience, but it was the hardest couple years of my life. Changed jobs and now I'm doing less work and being paid more.

Basically Japanese companies ass-rape their salaryman employees. The overtime system exists so they can exploit their workers with dreams of "progressing up the ladder". They're really punctual about coming in early, but that same zeal for keeping time doesn't extend to going home at a godly hour.

There's enough subliminal harassment and passive aggressive behavior going on to deflate your motivation, so you learn to accept your fate and basic wage salary.

You're not given enough time to have a life - the company wants that. It also makes it hard to look for another job because you can't get time off for interviews unless you fake illness (many workers do). Deprived of sleep your brain is too tired to do anything creative. Office coworkers have no life, so they're the most boring people on the planet.

The workers are fuelled full of crap that they have to work as a team for the good of the company - and of course they're told that. The boss wants to get rich quick and not have to pay the workers as much.

You wanna quit? Time off? Sorry, but your work comes first. Watch them place pressure on you to keep working "until the job is finished" which it never is, because they keep trying to find inventive ways to keep you working - usually involving anal retentive tasks which make no sense, like checking things a million times because they don't believe that you did it properly the first time.

Basically, the Japanese are taught not to resist or rebel, so they end up with passive robots who don't question the system, and because of this, Japanese companies get away with skirting the labor laws quite often.

On that topic, there's no motivation to work hard in these companies. A genius and a dunce of the same age bracket sent to the same company are paid the same wage simply because of their age. With a job situation like that, who the hell can be bothered trying?"

"Yeah, this is a part of the Japanese system I'd rather not see duplicated in other countries. The article doesn't mention that most of the businessmen are allowed little to no time off except for national holidays. Then they get hammered again into buying a $2,000 plane ticket to LA since it's the only time every other businessman in Japan can travel.

Asking for a week off of work will get you fired. Literally. A female friend of mine asked for a week off and she was told, "If you were a man I'd fire you." That ended that discussion. The only thing that saved her was sexism.

My girlfriend here worked until 5 AM on January 30 with the rest of her coworkers to finish the "year end work." That's 21 hours of work. That's just stupid.

Back when I was teaching English I did a class at City Hall. It started at 6 PM. One of the students was the manager of a construction project. He was sitting in this hour long English lesson even tho he started work at 8 AM. The day before. Yep, that's 34 straight hours at the office. After class he went back to his office to continue working.

Maybe you're reading articles like this and thinking it's no big deal, but really, it's a problem in Japan. Working to death is an actual cause of death and companies pay compensation to the widows for that reason. They don't pay the overtime the husband worked before having the heart attack, tho. In the end they save money.

Japan's a great place with a lot of great qualities, but this isn't one of them. Watching the regular Japanese person suffer through this employment system is depressing."

"The only thing that bothers me about all this is that many of these salarymen (especially the hira - "peons" that were just hired) is that they get paid absolutely garbage. Even with subsidized housing, they're barely scraping by. For example, I found out the other day that a rather large number of families living in public housing in the city where I live make less than half what I make and have to spend more time at work along with social obligations on evenings and weekends (mandatory drinking parties, company events, etc.).

I even found that some of my Japanese co-workers were being paid less than half what I make when we do essentially the same job and have the same or similar educational credentials. Since I don't make all that much to begin with (about comparable to what a first year public school teacher in the US makes at a modest school district), I wonder how they manage to make ends meet...

/likes living in Japan, but hates working for a Japanese organization"

[Choeki]

Heh. I've been quoted! Looks like there's at least some limited crossover between here and Fark.

[Greji]

Our friends at FARK.com weigh in on the subject of working for J-companies:

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2590143

Some choice quotes:

"....Basically Japanese companies ass-rape their salaryman employees. The overtime system exists so they can exploit their workers with dreams of "progressing up the ladder". They're really punctual about coming in early, but that same zeal for keeping time doesn't extend to going home at a godly hour....."

I wonder how many of these clowns actually worked for a J-company. By that, I mean as a full time salaried, career employee. If they had and still write that way, maybe they had the wrong place, but the total overall pay, counting all "hidden" allowances, benefits and bonus payments, highly overshadows the always stated "base Pay" which looks like peanuts. As far as the housing, I lived in a four bedroom mansion of the company and actually made money, because my maintenance allowance exceed costs for living there. There are a lot of fringies that the career employee gets that are not visable to the outsiders.

The "kuroshi" does exist and does occur, but then again, how many people in stateside high-pressured business do you hear about dropping over from a heart attack, stroke, or even nervous breakdowns? A lot of these are also over-weight and are in poor physical condition to begin with, which is also true in Japan.

I'm not saying that working for a J-comnpany is a bed of roses, but it sure ain't the depths of hell that a lot of writers portray it (and most of them are only mouthing what they"ve "heard on the grapevine, so it must be true").

As far as working 24 hours a day, the young people are in fact under a lot of pressure and do work longer hours to produce, but then again, that's kinda true anywhere. Overtime is also, only available to the union members (read non-supervisory) and some younger people will stay late to cash in on this extra money. Most companies now make you apply for overtime during the workday to keep the abuse of the system down. You do not see a lot of mid-level J-people staying around all that late. If they did, who would attend all these work parties and "old tsukiai's" that some people complain about.

There is a lot of bull shit being pumped out about the J-work place, but that is because it is in Japan and some people feel that as such, they must describe it in a different way, usually bad.

Shit, there're sweat shops and 18 hour days in places anywhere around the world. Japan is not anything special when it comes to these other areas. The idea of the overworked salary man is a bit blown overboard. Obviously, when the whistle blows and there is still time fragile work on the table, J-workers, even those under union guidelines, are not going to walk out the door (unlike certain other countries)! On the other token, if there is nothing pressing, don't stand between the exit door and the izakaya, or you might get hurt.

I also learned that where I originally thought that the term economic animal(s) was derogatory toward the J-salary people, I later learned that a lot of them took a lot of pride in this term, especially during the bubble. They also like being referred to by the type workaholic description that appears in these type of postings and other articles. It does great things for their egos and they also truely belive that this is unique to J-land. Nobody else works that hard (even if they don't themselves)! BTW, my hemorrhoids are still intact.

[Captain Japan]

I wonder how many of these clowns actually worked for a J-company. By that, I mean as a full time salaried, career employee. If they had and still write that way, maybe they had the wrong place, but the total overall pay, counting all "hidden" allowances, benefits and bonus payments, highly overshadows the always stated "base Pay" which looks like peanuts.

For example, at my local standee last Thursday...There's a guy and a lady at the bar. They are winding down their final drinks as I arrive. From the body language it seems like she is his mistress, hooker, or whatever. She goes to the bathroom. He calls for the bill (about 10,000 yen) and asks that that a receipt be made out in his company's name with all the proper hankos. I think I need to arrange for business meetings like that.

[Neo-Rio]

Our friends at FARK.com weigh in on the subject of working for J-companies:

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2590143

Some choice quotes:

"....Basically Japanese companies ass-rape their salaryman employees. The overtime system exists so they can exploit their workers with dreams of "progressing up the ladder". They're really punctual about coming in early, but that same zeal for keeping time doesn't extend to going home at a godly hour....."QUOTE]

I wonder how many of these clowns actually worked for a J-company. By that, I mean as a full time salaried, career employee.

This clown did. It's my quote.

Sure, there are companies and there are companies. Some don't treat you as badly and pay you a lot better. However, since the topic was about karoshi and since it's so prevalent in Japan -- and considering I was working in a place where I'd regularly hear stories of colleages working ungodly hours, being bullied by customers into working out of their contracts for more than they needed to, plus a combination of experiences stretching over 7+ years of living in Japan, meeting various people all saying mostly the same things, I have to assume that my experiences correspond to other similar cases.

Having said that, bad Japanese companies only exploit their workers because the workers allow them to... that included me the time I was there. The companies reinforce the bullshit that workers are good enough by themselves and need the company in order to have a "safe" life and constant stream of money. The company needs to have the illusion that the workers agree to their own ass-rape, in their "nice" and "polite" Japanese ways, otherwise they can't get away with it.

I knew it was going to be like that when I signed up, and I did it anyway because I wanted to fast track my work experience in my particular field. It's a good thing I liked what I did (and I had a plan for getting out) because it's the only way I would have survived the whole experience. It was funny that when I left, because everyone relying on my work -- mainly the people with no talent simply pushing papers, were really pissed that I would no longer prop them up any longer.

The whole thing was like something out of "Atlas Shrugged".

[Greji]

This clown did. It's my quote.

Rio, I'm not doubting that just like anywhere there are bad companies and good companies. After over 20 years, I would be willing to say that at the original time I started out with a Japanese workplace a lot of what you say was pretty true. It is not now.

Having said that, I can recognize that there are some companies that will tolerate this. Most will not. Where you get the individual pressure, it is normally applied by a Section or Department Chief. If you get one of the wierd ones for a boss, you may have to out live him i.e. until he gets transfered, retired, or otherwise goes down in flames, but as a rule, the workplaces are generally getting much better.

I started work at a time when women had to resign as soon as they became engaged. Now they can take up to two years maternity leave to have a baby. No working women could have dyed hair, now you don't see any with black hair. Two years ago, the government put out a statement that government employees should take all of their leave and that supervisors are subject to be asked or have to answer for not allowing subordinates time off. My own particular place has a manual addressing and providing investigative guidelines for "sekuhara" and obviously, prohibiting it.

Once again, you cannot change personalities whatever you do, so you may have to grin and bared it a lot of cases.