4 ms·

Run that one by a lawyer, but my understanding is that the bar is approximately "If we do not let them go, we will -- with night-follows-day-certainty -- go und

by patio11 10y ago

Run that one by a lawyer, but my understanding is that the bar is approximately "If we do not let them go, we will -- with night-follows-day-certainty -- go under." If it's simply a matter that you hired a plumber and don't have any toilets that need plunging, well, Japanese labor law considers that Management Error and not something which rises to the exceptional bar required to consequence an employee. Hire three plumbers but only have two plumbers worth of toilets? Get better at math.

derefr 10y ago
I wonder if you could simply retain an external firm to act as the Beeminder kind of punishment-trust on a corporate level. Then you could say "if we aren't allowed to fire these employees, [this company who holds 99% of our money] is instructed and required to flush it down the toilet."
- patio11 10y ago
  In practice the way to do things is to take a large firm and reconstruct it as a supply chain. Think like, say, a hypothetical car company. Instead of making your own engines, you source them from Engines R' Us. You might be ERU's sole customer but that is neither here nor there. If you have a bad year and need less production staff you just tell ERU "Hey, orders next quarter will be down by 60%. Plan accordingly." ERU might have to take drastic measures. Ah, the lamentable if inevitable realities of being a small business. The car company, of course, the car company would never fire the full-time employees.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    That's a fascinating account, thanks. Certainly not the first place I've heard of that restructures to avoid horizontal or vertical integration, and then funnels everything like it was one company.
VLM 10y ago
With the plumber analogy the bill usually breaks out parts and labor and labor is, well, 100% labor. With a more Japanese-like job like salaryman at a car manufacturer, the cost of labor per car is extremely low, like $1K to $2K per car regardless of size or cost of the end product, so if you have to bury $100 somewhere in a $60K pickup truck nobody is going to notice, so you end up with "do nothing rooms". Also don't forget "do nothing rooms" are not Exactly a wasted expense, they are purchasing an option on future labor. If labor demand increases 10% next year for whatever reason, and you fire a guy with 10 years experience, you have committed a major management error, whereas having 10% of your workforce do nothing means you bought an option that fundamentally only costs $100 per automobile sold, so that's pretty cheap insurance in case you have to ramp up or someone dies or unexpectedly retires or something.

by patio11 10y ago

derefr 10y ago

I wonder if you could simply retain an external firm to act as the Beeminder kind of punishment-trust on a corporate level. Then you could say "if we aren't allowed to fire these employees, [this company who holds 99% of our money] is instructed and required to flush it down the toilet."

patio11 10y ago
In practice the way to do things is to take a large firm and reconstruct it as a supply chain. Think like, say, a hypothetical car company. Instead of making your own engines, you source them from Engines R' Us. You might be ERU's sole customer but that is neither here nor there. If you have a bad year and need less production staff you just tell ERU "Hey, orders next quarter will be down by 60%. Plan accordingly." ERU might have to take drastic measures. Ah, the lamentable if inevitable realities of being a small business. The car company, of course, the car company would never fire the full-time employees.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  That's a fascinating account, thanks. Certainly not the first place I've heard of that restructures to avoid horizontal or vertical integration, and then funnels everything like it was one company.

VLM 10y ago

With the plumber analogy the bill usually breaks out parts and labor and labor is, well, 100% labor. With a more Japanese-like job like salaryman at a car manufacturer, the cost of labor per car is extremely low, like $1K to $2K per car regardless of size or cost of the end product, so if you have to bury $100 somewhere in a $60K pickup truck nobody is going to notice, so you end up with "do nothing rooms". Also don't forget "do nothing rooms" are not Exactly a wasted expense, they are purchasing an option on future labor. If labor demand increases 10% next year for whatever reason, and you fire a guy with 10 years experience, you have committed a major management error, whereas having 10% of your workforce do nothing means you bought an option that fundamentally only costs $100 per automobile sold, so that's pretty cheap insurance in case you have to ramp up or someone dies or unexpectedly retires or something.