Workers in Japan can’t quit their jobs. They hire resignation experts to help

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/workers-japan-t-quit-jobs-003019818.html

by BikkaZz

4 comments

  1. “A typical 9-to-9 workday is the bare minimum. “The latest I would leave [the office] would be 11 p.m.,” said the 24-year-old, who used to work for some of Japan’s largest telecoms and e-payment companies.

    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.

    For the price of a fancy dinner, many Japanese workers hire these proxy firms to help them resign stress-free.

    At a cost of 22,000 yen (about $150) – or 12,000 yen for those who work part time – it pledges to help employees tender their resignations, negotiate with their companies and provide recommendations for lawyers if legal disputes arise.

    “Some people come to us after having their resignation letter ripped three times and employers not letting them quit even when they kneel down to the ground to bow,” she said, in another illustration of the deferential workplace culture embedded in Japan.

    Japan has long had an overwork culture. Employees across various sectors report punishing hours, high pressure from supervisors and deference to the company. These employers are widely known as “black firms.”

    More than 370 companies have been blacklisted by labor bureaus across the country since the list was published in 2017.

    The stress has proven fatal for decades, as exemplified by a phenomenon called “karoshi,” or “death by overwork.”

    As the country grapples with a labor shortage fueled by a rapidly aging population and declining birth rates, young people now have more say in the market than their predecessors.

  2. I don’t know much about the work culture in any country except for the country I live in. But this sounds terrible. Workers need rights and for the bare minimum to atleast be aloud to quit a job. Sounds like Japan needs some form of workers unions, where the workforce can set some rules on their time because everybody’s time should be owned by themselves not by somebody else.

  3. What’s stopping someone from just not working if they resign but it’s rejected. They show up at 9 and leave at 6 (or whatever the contractual time is)?

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