July 11, 2019
The Abe Cabinet at the end of June decided on a five-year plan to slash 30,927 public service jobs which will be implemented in FY2020.
Without providing convincing reasons for the massive job cut, the Abe government gave figures for layoffs which include 7,162 workers in the Finance Ministry; 6,176 workers in the Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism Ministry; 5,372 workers in the Justice Ministry; and 3,394 workers in the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry.
The total number of government workers at the national and local levels in Japan is smaller than that in other countries. Japan has 36.7 public workers per 1,000 citizens. In comparison, France, for example, has 89.5 workers per 1,000 citizens and the U.S. has 64.1.
Secretary General of the Japan Federation of National Public Service Employees' Unions ( Kokkororen) Kugo Kenji issued a statement criticizing the Abe government’s 30,000 job-cut scheme. Kugo said, “This measure will lead to weakening the foundations of the administrative organizations and undermining people’s constitutional right to access public services. In addition, it will inevitably affect public workers’ health with heavier workloads.” He added that the union will urge the government to withdraw the retrenchment plan and instead increase the number of government employees drastically.
The Japanese Communist Party pointed out that the government workforce has shrunk due to past job-cut measures, which makes it difficult for existing workers to fulfill their functions as public servants working to improve people’s livelihoods and protect people’s safety. In the ongoing campaign for the July 21 Upper House election, the party proposes that the government hire more workers in order to enable public workers to properly play their role in providing services to the people.
Past related article:
> Japan’s low public sector worker density leads to low public service levels [ March 12, 2019]
Without providing convincing reasons for the massive job cut, the Abe government gave figures for layoffs which include 7,162 workers in the Finance Ministry; 6,176 workers in the Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism Ministry; 5,372 workers in the Justice Ministry; and 3,394 workers in the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry.
The total number of government workers at the national and local levels in Japan is smaller than that in other countries. Japan has 36.7 public workers per 1,000 citizens. In comparison, France, for example, has 89.5 workers per 1,000 citizens and the U.S. has 64.1.
Secretary General of the Japan Federation of National Public Service Employees' Unions ( Kokkororen) Kugo Kenji issued a statement criticizing the Abe government’s 30,000 job-cut scheme. Kugo said, “This measure will lead to weakening the foundations of the administrative organizations and undermining people’s constitutional right to access public services. In addition, it will inevitably affect public workers’ health with heavier workloads.” He added that the union will urge the government to withdraw the retrenchment plan and instead increase the number of government employees drastically.
The Japanese Communist Party pointed out that the government workforce has shrunk due to past job-cut measures, which makes it difficult for existing workers to fulfill their functions as public servants working to improve people’s livelihoods and protect people’s safety. In the ongoing campaign for the July 21 Upper House election, the party proposes that the government hire more workers in order to enable public workers to properly play their role in providing services to the people.
Past related article:
> Japan’s low public sector worker density leads to low public service levels [ March 12, 2019]
