Japan airlines is cutting their costs by nearly 30% by 2007. how do they plan to do this? reduce their workforce from 44,000 to… about 36,000…. thats about 20%ish…a bit more. either way… cutting off 8,000 people is a big move…. especially for a japanese company.
why is this a big deal? cause japanese companies dont fire people! see… in the past… insurance and corporate security was not really an issue. why? cause people lived and died for the same company their whole lives. many people in the turn of the century… committed suicide… just cause they lost their jobs… in japan. basically you losing your job… means you have no family. no loyalty… and basically no one loves you. you are an outcast who doesnt deserve to live. so how can you get another job? you cant. so… to provide for their family… many old high level executives… jumped in front of trains… so family could colllect insurance money. nice. luckily… the job cuts will probably be the younger crowd… taht isnt soooo likely to kill themselves… however… it will likely send ripples throughout the business communities as to the future of the economy.
JAL knows this. so how do they plan to handle it? by NOT REPLACING jobs when people leave. yeah… sounds good at first right? i mean… you dont actually FIRE people… right? well… think about it. You work for a company… and the company has a very community minded view… and YOUR JOB>.. yes… YOUR SPECIFIC job… is a job the company DOESNT WANT anymore… what does that mean? well… it means you are extra baggage. you know it… they know it… and slowly… people start feeling sorry for you. sure… your coworkers wont be jerks… but your bosses… might start giving you incentives to leave… so you start… to get depressed… morale goes down… now… not only are you wasting company money… but you are … doing a BAD JOB too…..
personally… i dont think this plan will work. Let’s see how it turns out. I think a better way would be to gear up for more efficiency… and…then just cut the people loose. clean sweep. like a psycho girlfriend… gotta make a clean break… or they keep coming back with problems. better in the long run. plus… it will prepare the japanese people for the “western ” way of business they seem to want sooo much to mimic…. honestly … that is a foolish game as well… but we will leave that for another time…
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111048156109276106,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_asia is the wall street journal that discusses this….. if its still up when you read this.