Bosses feeling strain of dismissing workers
Business Desk
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Losing one's job places a tremendous strain on a person - both in psychological and practical terms - but having to inform workers their services are no longer required also is very stressful.
A Japanese health, labour and welfare ministry forecast on the employment outlook released March 31 paints a stark picture: More than 190,000 non-regular workers and about 12,500 regular workers have lost or are expected to lose their jobs between October and June. With no end in sight to the job crisis, experts say efforts are needed to reduce the emotional impact on both the fired and the firers.
In September, a director at a engineer dispatch company in Tokyo ordered a member of the marketing staff in his 50s to tell a group of new recruits who were taken on in April last year that they were to be dismissed. The marketer had to give dozens of dispatch workers notice they were to be laid off.
He had no idea how to go about telling the people in question, whom he considered to be "fellow workers", because he had never had to do so before, but he told himself someone had to do it. He took one of the young employees into a room at their workplace and informed him he was to be dismissed at the end of the year. He made it clear it was not his decision and expressed regret. The new recruit was stunned into silence and looked as if he would burst into tears.
The marketer took pains to give a detailed account of the business situation at the company and at the end of the meeting gave a sincere apology. The meeting wound up in the evening. The marketer was exhausted, but could not get to sleep that night.
In a cruel twist of fate, he too was given a pink slip last month. While he is looking for a new job himself, he says he still feels bad about the young workers to whom he had to give the bad news.
Elsewhere, a Tokyo-based automobile components manufacturer has seen orders drop sharply. In November, the company president gradually began to cut dispatch workers, who represented about 40 percent of its workforce of more than 100.
The layoffs were unavoidable from a management perspective, but the president was tortured by the thought of whether he had the right to change other people's lives in this way.
The 56-year-old president may even be forced in the future to make a decision to fire regular workers. He said he had not been able to sleep well since autumn because of worries about laying more staffers off.
Kanda-Higashi Clinic, a facility that gives professional psychological support, has been listening to a different kind of complaint from business managers since the economic downturn became a reality in the autumn. According to the clinic, managers have been letting off steam accumulated by employment issues, telling the clinic things such as: "I have to terminate the contracts of dispatch workers working with us. It's really hard to tell them."
"(Managers) can deal with the role of giving people notice if they can attach valid reasoning by saying things such as 'It's for the good of the organization,'" said Tomoki Takano, 43, a psychiatrist and vice director of the clinic.
"But it's not so simple," Takano added. "It's hard for people to find new jobs at the moment, and this places a great psychological strain on those who have to give them their marching orders."
"Using an appropriate manner when giving people their notice can ease the psychological burden on the person that has to tell them," said Takahisa Horinouchi, a professor at Yokohama National University and a certified clinical psychologist who has tried to help several hundred people fired from foreign-owned financial institutions deal with the situation.
"The firer needs to try to reduce the sense of loss felt by the person being fired," Horinouchi, 56, added.
A UN advisor has suggested that a basket of currencies - including a regional currency in Asia - could replace the US dollar in shaping the global financial system. "I think China should play a cooperative role with Japan, South Korea and other Asian countries to introduce a regional currency while the world is trying to replace the old reserve currency system," Jeffrey Sachs, special advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, told China Daily on Wednesday. Sachs is also professor of Columbia University. He said China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan has come up with an innovative idea to introduce a global currency in an effort to redefine the rigid global financial regime, which has undergone no major change since World War II. "However, I think the US dollar, British pound, euro and a regional currency in Asia can shape a basket of global reserve currencies with their own special drawing rights," said Sachs, who is with the UN delegation attending the G20 summit. He believes the US's previous supply side monetary policies and the US dollar's monopoly were the roots of the financial crisis. However, Sachs was more reserved about the idea of introducing a global currency to replace the US dollar and said China should cooperate with Japan, South Korea and some other countries. Sachs hoped the G20 leaders combined stimulus packages, economic development and sustainability when designing polices for growth. He said stimulus packages can rescue the world's economy, and the ensuing development can ensure the whole world, not merely rich countries, is able to share in the benefits. Sustainability, meanwhile, can address the world's grave risks of climate change, stress on the water supply and loss of biodiversity. He said the world's 3 billion poor, especially the 1 billion poorest of the poor, are suffering terribly from the crisis, and the situation could become worse. "But the pity is that the poor have got zero attention so far, while many countries are busy bailing out banks and businesses," Sachs said. Soros: Dollar Will Remain Reserve Currency By: Maria Bartiromo, Anchor | 03 Apr 2009 | 04:38 AM ET CNBC The US dollar will remain the world's reserve currency for a while and it is probable that the world economy will start growing next year, with China, Brazil and India among the first to bounce back, billionaire investor and currencies expert George Soros told CNBC. "I think the dollar is the dominant currency for a while to come. But in the long run I think it would be important that the US should be subject to the same discipline as the rest of the world," Soros said in an interview after the G20 summit in London. He also said his recent comments about Britain and the need for funds from the International Monetary Fund had been misreported. UK newspapers reported that Soros had said it was likely that the UK would go to the IMF to fund its budget deficit. "That was a misleading headline given to an interview where I said it's most unlikely that Britain would need to go to the IMF," Soros said, adding that he was not shorting the pound. "However the fact that it created such an outcry shows what a stigma there is attached to having to go to the IMF," he said. Banks' toxic assets will continue to weigh on the world economy and changing accounting rules to allow banks more flexibility in marking to market distressed assets, adopted Thursday in the US, will not help banks as much as recapitalizing them, according to Soros. "I think much more effective would have been to recapitalize the banks and because of the history of the way the TARP money was spent, it was really very messy and very badly done; because of that there's increasing reluctance by Congress to make new money available," he said. "And yet, it would be much, much better to create clean banks, banks that are able to lend, I think we missed the boat on that," Soros added A long time will be spent allowing banks to "dig themselves out of the hole" and during that period, they will not provide sufficient credit to encourage business and will probably have higher fees, he said. The world leaders "pulled a few rabbits out of their hat" at the G20 summit in London, and managed to get more than Soros had expected. "I would say that it's probably the first time that the authorities are probably ahead of the curve," Soros said. "They managed to put together a bigger package than anybody expected." The $250 billion Special Drawing Rights package is extremely important because it created money internationally and will help to allow countries that are not able to print currency to stimulate their economies. More and better regulation is needed, but authorities will need to be very careful not to 'go overboard,' Soros said. As for hedge funds who have threatened lately to leave London, unhappy about the tax regime and business climate, he said: "Where are they going to go? Another planet? I think hedge funds will have to get used to being regulated." — Written by CNBC.com By Teresa Cespedes and Terry Wade LIMA (Reuters) - Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was convicted of human rights crimes and sentenced to 25 years in prison on Tuesday, the first time a democratically elected Latin American president has been found guilty in his own country of such offenses. A three-judge panel convicted him of ordering a military death squad to carry out two massacres that killed 25 people during his 1990-2000 rule, when he was battling communist guerrillas. Nearly 70,000 people died in two decades of conflict in the Andean country. Once lauded as a hero, Fujimori, 70, could spend the rest of his life in prison. The verdict is likely to have far-reaching political implications for Peru. "He was the president who saved our country from terrorism," the former president's daughter Keiko Fujimori, a presidential hopeful and popular lawmaker, said as she called for supporters to march in the streets to protest the verdict. The elder Fujimori did not react to the ruling except to say that he will appeal it. Fujimori's popularity soared when he defeated the brutal Shining Path guerrillas, tamed economic chaos and freed dozens of hostages taken by the Tupac Amaru insurgency during a siege at the Japanese ambassador's house in Lima. But a corruption scandal involving his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, sank his government in 2000. Fujimori fled to exile in Japan, the country where his parents were born. He was later arrested in Chile and extradited to Peru, where he often snoozed through testimony and took off his socks. Other Latin American rulers faced trials over human rights crimes before Fujimori, but they were military dictators or prosecuted outside their home countries. Chilean General Augusto Pinochet died in 2006 before he could be convicted. A TURNING POINT Activists saw the trial as a turning point for Peru, still coming to terms with a bloody civil war that started in 1980. "For the first time, the Peruvian justice system rose to the occasion in this historic fight against impunity," said Gisela Ortiz, whose brother was killed at La Cantuta University in 1992 as Fujimori's squads hunted for presumed leftists. Fujimori's conviction stemmed from the La Cantuta killings and a 1991 massacre in the Barrios Altos section of Lima. Many abuses by people on both sides of the civil war have never been prosecuted, and thousands of unmarked graves scar the countryside. The Shining Path, led by a Maoist philosophy professor named Abimael Guzman, was perhaps the most brutal of Latin America's insurgencies. It beheaded people with machetes in the plazas of Andean towns, bombed the capital and killed journalists. Guzman is currently in prison in Peru. The state, which was nearly toppled, struggled for years to halt the onslaught and sent guns to groups of vigilante peasants in the hinterlands to help the army. Minister Lenihan: made reference to our need to restore our damaged reputation Tuesday April 07 2009 The wealthiest were hardest hit by Minister Brian Lenihan when he announced details of his Supplementary Budget earlier today. With a doubling of the income levies, the Finance Minister ensured that those who earn the biggest salaries will be hardest hit by the hikes, along with smokers and the owners of diesel vehicles. Minister Lenihan said the current income levy rates will be doubled to 2%, 4% and 6% and the exemption threshold will be €15,028. The 4% rate will apply to income in excess of €75,036 and the 6% rate to income in excess of €174,980. The PRSI ceiling will be increased from €52,000 to €75,036, with effect from May 1. Other major points in the Budget included a hike of 25c on every packet of 20 cigarettes, and a 5c increase on a litre of diesel fuel. Childcare payments were also hit, as predicted, and the Minister announced a new ‘pre pre-school’ year from next year, which would also see the childcare supplement halved to €41.50 this year, and abolished at the end of the year. He also announced that child benefit will be means-tested, or taxed, from next year. The childcare supplement will be replaced in January 2010 with a pre-school Early Childhood and Education Scheme (ECCE) for all children between the ages of 3 years 3 months and 4 years 6 months. A capitation grant will be payable to service providers who provide free pre-school services. The jobseeker’s allowance is to be cut by more than half, from its current level of just over €200, to €100, for the under-20s, and there is to be no social welfare ‘Christmas bonus’ paid over Christmas 2009. Making a number of references to the country’s damaged financial reputation, the Minister also introduced a new ‘Asset Management’ agency, to take over the bad debts of Irish banks, and also a new administrative structure for the Central Bank. Introducing the new measures, the Minister also said the government and Dáil members must ‘lead by example’ and announced a number of cutbacks in payments for TDs under a number of separate headings. He said there would be a 10pc cut in expenses payments to TDs, other than mileage expenses, and he also said there would be no more long-service payments for TDs. Dáil members who are former teachers will no longer be paid the difference in their teacher’s salary and their Dáil take-home pay, to allow them to retain their teaching job. He also said that a sitting TD would no longer be allowed to claim a pension while still a member of the House. Chairpersons of Oireachtas committees will see their allowances cut in half for the role, and the Minister also announced an overall review of public sector pay. Referring to our need to restore our financial reputation abroad, the Minister for Finance said there were six steps we should take to put us back on the road to recovery. He said we must (1) stabilise our public finances, (2) restore our damaged banking system, (3) regain the competitiveness we have lost, (4) protect the jobs we have and grow more, (5) support and stimulate economic confidence and (6) restore our financial reputation abroad and the damage done by our 'no' vote in the Lisbon Treaty Tuesday April 07 2009 A man, dazed, bandaged and shocked picks his way through the rubble of Italy's worst quake in 30 years. Working in almost total silence, clearing away rubble with their bare hands, rescuers in Italyraced last night to save dozens of people thought to be buried alive after an earthquake killed at least 150. All day, a steady stream of survivors had been pulled out from underneath collapsed buildings. And as the emergency services worked into the night, they were still guided by voices that proved their efforts were not in vain. As one fireman took a momentary break in L'Aquila, the medieval city at the centre of the 6.3 magnitude shock, he pointed to a pile of concrete, once a four-storey building but now no more than 10ft high. "People are trapped under there," he said. "I don't think they are, I know they are. My colleagues can hear sounds." Every so often, one of the 1,700 rescuers drafted in to theAbruzzo region, about 60 miles east of Rome, would call for total silence after hearing a faint shout for help. At one point, the helpers had to hush the wailing of grief from a bereaved family as they tried to pinpoint the sound of a crying baby. Occasionally, the rescuers' brave efforts -- suspended at times as the city was hit by small aftershocks -- were rewarded when a survivor was dragged from the wreckage of their home. One middle-aged man, who, like everyone else, had been in bed when the earthquake struck at 3.32am local time, was brought out wearing just his underwear. He had the strength to stand up and weep with relief as he was embraced. Others were too exhausted to do anything but gulp in the air. But the more common sight was the ever-increasing number of bodies being hauled from the rubble and laid out on pavements or in makeshift open-air morgues. The earthquake, Italy's worst in almost 30 years, left 50,000 to 100,000 people homeless as more than 15,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Hospitals At least 1,500 people were injured. Many were treated in field hospitals set up after local hospitals, badly damaged, had to be evacuated. Buildings that stood for centuries, including L'Aquila's cathedral, also crumbled away during the 30-second tremor. "The heavens fell in," said Father Mauro Orru, a priest in the village of Onna, five miles outside L'Aquila, whose church was partially destroyed. "It was like the end of the world." The village was almost entirely levelled by the earthquake, with at least 25 people killed from a population of just 300. Rescue workers used sniffer dogs to find bodies, which were carefully wrapped in bed sheets and laid on wooden pallets in the shade as an undertaker brought as many coffins as he could muster. Crying Villagers sobbed as they gathered around the shrouded corpses, with one man thumping his fists on a coffin that held the bloodied remains of his wife. Another coffin held a mother and her infant daughter. The crying was frequently drowned out by helicopters on a meadow outside the village, bringing vital supplies and fresh personnel. Angelo Depaolis (57) a mechanic whose house in Onna was destroyed, said: "We were all terrified. It was 20 seconds of hell. "We just ran down the stairs in our pyjamas and out into the streets. It was incredible. I've lived here all my life but I've never experienced an earthquake." Mr Depaolis was making his way to the village sports field, where the army was setting up tents to provide the only means of shelter available. In the other 26 towns and villages badly hit, military barracks, stadiums, gyms and public halls were converted into dormitories for the thousands of people with nowhere else to go, who came with whatever belongings they were able to rescue. Elsewhere, thousands of hotel rooms along the Adriatic coast were requisitioned to provide temporary accommodation for families. "It's a catastrophe and an immense shock," said Renato Di Stefano, who was moving with his family to a camp in a sports field. "It's struck in the heart of the city. We will never forget the pain."Currency basket can replace US dollar, says UN advisor
Fu Jing
China DailyPeru's Fujimori gets 25 years prison for massacres
Wealthiest hardest hit by changes in income levy
Death toll soars in quake tragedy
Rescuers race to save dozens trapped in ruins of their homes
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