this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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Workers in Japan can’t quit their jobs. They hire resignation experts to help (www.cnn.com)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Asking to leave work on time or taking some time off can be tricky enough. Even trickier is tendering a resignation, which can be seen as the ultimate form of disrespect in the world’s fourth-biggest economy, where workers traditionally stick with one employer for decades, if not for a lifetime.

In the most extreme cases, grumpy bosses rip up resignation letters and harass employees to force them to stay.

Yuki Watanabe was unhappy at her previous job, saying her former supervisor often ignored her, making her feel bad. But she didn’t dare resign.

“I didn’t want my ex-employer to deny my resignation and keep me working for longer,” she told CNN during a recent interview.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

which can be seen as the ultimate form of disrespect in the world’s fourth-biggest economy, where workers traditionally stick with one employer for decades, if not for a lifetime.

The fuck are you on about, CNN?

In the most extreme cases, grumpy bosses rip up resignation letters and harass employees to force them to stay.

This is more true. Power Harassment here is a huge thing. In almost all cases, a full company employee legally just needs to give 2 weeks of notice to the boss and HR. Keep receipts, but that's it; there is no more obligation aside from that in 99% of cases. An employer can't just 'deny a resignation' legally. They can pound all the sand they would like.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

deny my resignation

Is this weird culture, or modern slavery? I can't really tell.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I just made a post, but it's illegal in almost all cases. As a regular, full-time (seishain) employee out of probationary period, two weeks notice is all that is legally required and them saying 'no' does fuck all to change that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

2 weeks is a legal requirement? That's scary. Quite a window of opportunity for harassment in bad situations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

If they face harassment and it can be documented, there is some recourse as of late, but I don't know specifics there.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Porque no los dos?

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 week ago

To me that isnt even the worst part of their godawfull worldculture.

Its that you have to sacrifice your private time too to go drinking or whatever with your boss so you can crawl up his ass like the good drone you are.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I think we have to have some context here.

Japan has I believe something called "tenured work position".

It is literally a guaranteed job for life. The company can't fire you and usually you will get paid till your retirement whether you work the job decently in your life.

I believe the term is Seisha-In ( https://japan-dev.com/blog/seishain )

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

正社員 sei shain - true company employee. The retirement thing kinda depends on a lot of things, but it is really hard to get fired.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

My understanding is that the employer side of this contract quit getting honored religiously during the lost decade and employment in Japan is increasingly contingent and precarious.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Citation? The legal protections are all still very much there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean then it makes no sense, as a two way street I can see the appeal (kinda).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The way this has worked is that the Japanese economy has bifurcated with the graduation-to-retirement employment being available to a ever smaller group of white collar workers called salary-men. To become a salary-man you have to go to college and get hired the year you graduate through campus recruiting. If you miss your "window" then you can't become a salary-man and will be stuck in contingent work for the rest of your life.

The people quitting in this case are not salary-men (a salary-man quitting would be pretty unthinkable) but their bosses probably are, hence the cultural divide.

Sometimes salary-men do lose their jobs due to bankruptcy of the organization for instance. Typically the solution if that happens is to jump in front of a train.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

The social pressure and societal loss of face is very bad in Japan. There has to be a better way.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 week ago (4 children)

How does the boss ripping up a resignation letter "force" them to stay? Are the employers falsifying the end of the employment as a firing for cause, or are the ex-employees going to get blackballed, or what?

Being an American who clearly doesn't get their cultural hangups, which I assume is the whole problem, I don't understand why they don't just just video themselves handing over the resignation letter (or e-mail it, or mail it in with whatever kind of receipt Japan's postal service offers, or fax it since Japan apparently still does that (LOL)) and then quit showing up.

I also don't understand why, if it's so hard to get bosses to "let" them leave, employees don't just work-to-rule and leave after 8 hours, expectations be damned.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I posted above, but it does not. A regular, full-time employee without any other special circumstances needs only give 2 weeks of notice (make sure to keep receipts) and the company can pound sand thereafter.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

From the article it sounds like a mostly psychological thing, like they have been so conditioned to do what they are told that bosses can bully/shame them into staying even after saying they quit.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The culture is very different.

Imagine you are 9 years old, and you want to move away from your parents who are more on the violent side than on the nice listening side... Your little letter you hand crafted (because you know no one that had done it before personally, you just imagined you could, so you did your best) is now being ripped up by your angry father who skreams at you to go to your room!

What do you do?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Stab. But I was a bad kid.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There was a scene in Back To The Future Part II (1989) where Marty's Japanese boss fires him via fax in 2015.

It's 2024 and the Japanese are still using faxes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Faxes were used much later than you'd expect but usage has fallen off considerably in the past 10 years. Sony also finally quit making VCRs in 2016.

Bipedal robots and faxes, but it's getting better

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your doctor is still using fax as well. It's much more secure than email and is the gold standard for confidential materials since it requires a physical wiretap to access.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Get outta here with that bullshit. Encrypted email has been standard for like 20 years now, Fax is functionally plaintext across a telephone line. Most places that interact with technophobes that still utilize fax are using email-to-fax services.

Hospitals use it because regulations that have not been rewritten this century, and it's an easy bare minimum to meet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Yup! Fax is considered “analog” where as email is “digital” so the Hipaa/Hi-Tech laws are a lot easier on faxing then emails.

[–] [email protected] 87 points 1 week ago (1 children)

...and their birth rate isn't going to stop tanking until this kind of slave-driving bullshit changes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

The boss tearing up a resignation letter is not legally binding in any way and the employee is not obliged to stay beyond the legally mandated notice period (two weeks in the vast majority of cases). There are many reasons the birth rate here isn't going up, but that's not one of them (though it is an example of power harassment which has recently gained more penalties and legal recognition, though there's a ways to go on that).

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A typical 9-to-9 workday is the bare minimum.

I have seen this in France in the 90s, but more to the bare maximum, 8-8 or 9-9, without being paid overtime of course. Part of why I moved to Canada doing 9-5 or 8-4

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure that's not legal.

My knowledge of the French labor laws is roughly 0, but France is not exactly known for having lax regulations in that regard.

And at least in Germany, it's straight up illegal to work more than 10h a day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

For context, American. Those were the best 6 weeks of my life as far as work trips go. Having to go by German law was amazing. Unlike the 80-100 hour weeks I was doing at times in the UK for the same customer. The PM on the US side tried to encourage some of the team to work in the hotel after hours, or on their days off, but not let on with the customer who would send you home if they found out. That didn't go over well. Screw you, I am going to a museum, having delicious schnitzel, beer, and touching some grass.

Let's just say that we pretty much begged for future jobs in Germany. Never got to go back, but was definitely one of the few jobs I can fondly look back on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Of course it's illegal, my friend worked for EDF-GDF (electric gas utilities, government owned) and always came home at 8 or 9PM. If he leaves at 6PM everyone will look at him, sweating, because he left the afternoon.

Don't know if it changed in 2024

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But they told me French works 35h per week ! /s

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

... We do. I'd definitely resign from a place that expects me to spend 12 hours at work, and it's illegal for the company for you to do too much overtime (the limit it 35 hours per year, doublable once if the employee asks the local authority in writing)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

I really, truly love how little crap the French people will accept from their government and employers. Y'all do it right.