Dumbing down in Yokohama
The Yokohama city government has discovered that about 700 municipal employees gained employment by lying about their qualifications. . .By understating their academic credentials on job applications!
The employees in question secured employment offered to those with high school degrees or lower by omitting entries about their higher education in their resumes.
The city government announced that offending employees will be punished suspension for one month, which is a pretty good indication of why municipal jobs are so attractive. Even in a case like there where employment was secured dishonestly, the punishment is limited suspension, and not termination.
But that is about to change. Yokohama has announced that it will be adding falsification of academic achievements to its list of offenses that rate disciplinary dismissal.
When I got to this ‘burg, I did the same thing. I *could not* land a decent job here so I asked around about why. Seems the locals who hire are a bit insecure about people with a “wider sphere of experience”. “Over-qualified” was a nice refrain I heard (not that it helped me much)… .
So my various pieces of academic paper started falling off my resume, along with my international experience.
I *finally* landed a swivel servant job (where I am three years later with no permanence, just those lovely juggling variations of ‘contracts’) where my only real skill needed is to be able to rub my two brain cells together to generate a basic idea, to be able to type accurately and to find my way to work each morning.
But it pays a living wage (i.e. a single person can live in a one-bedroom apartment within 45-60 minutes of the downtown core on the salary. Forget about saving or retirement or having a car or paying much off a student loan if you got one but at least you won’t have to constantly look at the bank balance to juggle bills or have to live in someone’s dank basement suite), I like the people fine enough and feeling a slight case of lower middle-class ennui is still a luxury for me after years of struggling.
So, yeah. I can see why some desperate over-qualified people went that route.
After all, what the hell does it say about the economy when you have educated people feeling like they not only have to hide their accomplishments on their resumes but also resort to knowingly skirting the issue of certain hiring restrictions and bumping out less-educated people for a chance at a decent paying regular job… like a cook, garbage collector or bus driver.
August 12th, 2007 at 3:29 pmTheoretically the creation or reinvention of industry is the only solution to fulfill the employments of higher educated people. An examples is, the transformation from inefficient conventional industries to new advanced industries, such as Environment(Energy, Transport or Agriculture), Gene and Bio-technology, Nano technology(fine machinery), Information and Communication technology(electronics) and so on. For any nation this challenge is important.
As for Japan however, I feel the national vitality is weakened compared to some 20 years ago. Before, people would talk more about High-tech and industry structural reform. Today, people talk about social welfare, pension system or nursing homes. Is this the sign of aging society or declining social vitality ?
August 12th, 2007 at 8:12 pmFor the readers who don’t know about ” Heaven ” of public service personnel in Japan, I’d like to give brief info about privileges of public servants here.
1. They won’t be fired unless they commit crimes.
2. They actually don’t have severe task norm.
3. They have their own favourable welfare and pension system.
I would say this is the labour dumping supported by the tax. Therefore ” Dumping down in Yokohama ” is nothing to wonder about. (Someday people might resent whole the public service personnel.)
For many years the politic is crying for the structural reform of the public service personnel system. But so far it’s progress is quite sluggish. Recent posted ” Pension data scandal ” and ” Yubari city bankruptcy ” are caused by deteriorated public servants. They are just a surface of the iceberg above water.
August 12th, 2007 at 8:30 pmIf anyone wants to know about the chances of reforming the civil service, I suggest reading the diaries of the Rt. Hon. James Hacker, MP - better known as “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister”. Why else is the Law Faculty at Todai so revered? For its instant admission to top private firms? Nope - to the top layers of the civil service and all the stuff Tofu mentioned, and beyond. And then at the end, amakudari and a golden handshake the size of Konishiki’s.
August 13th, 2007 at 11:48 amI’d rather call it civil disservice. It’s not as if you have to do a good job when you work for the government.
August 13th, 2007 at 1:41 pm