Sunday November 18, 12:46 PM
Major Japanese firms to shed 120,000 jobs at home
sg.biz.yahoo.com
Eighty-two major Japanese firms have this year announced plans to cut more than 120,000 domestic jobs, showing lifetime employment is becoming a thing of the past.
Companies ranging from electronics makers and information service providers to retailers and pharmaceuticals aim to introduce early retirement programmes, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said Sunday.
They have stepped up transferring workers to group firms or spinning off operations, which often result in wage cuts, it said, while adding 120,000 included "natural decreases" resulting from ordinary retirement vacancies.
"Japan's corporate hiring and personnel strategy are faced with a turning point as they had functioned on the assumption of lifetime employment and seniority-based pay schemes," the economic daily daily said.
Of the 82 companies introducing early retirement or encouraging workers to quit "voluntarily" through other means, electronics makers and information service firms plan to shed the most jobs, at some 65,000, it said.
At Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., some 8,000 workers are expected to apply for an early retirement programme by January, it said.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. aims to transfer 60,000 workers aged 51 or older to subsidiaries to continue employing them, but at wages about 15-30 percent lower, it said.
Besides information-technology companies, operators of supermarkets and department stores and clothing firms are aggressively slashing their work forces, it said.
Among drug makers, which have been relatively immune from economic ups and downs, Sankyo Co. Ltd. plans to reduce its staff by 1,000 by the year to March 2006, it said. |
