EDITORIAL: Bureaucrats' rights

The National Personnel Authority made its recommendations concerning the salaries of central government employees to the Cabinet and the Diet. The board proposed cuts to annual salaries by an average of 1.5 percent. Just as interesting, however, was the position the authority took on the basic labor rights of public servants.

The authority effectively questioned the claim of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan that it is possible to trim the government payroll while giving government employees all their basic labor rights.

Public servants don't enjoy all the workers' rights guaranteed by the Constitution. They have only limited rights to bargain collectively and are banned from going on strike. Instead, the authority makes recommendations aimed at keeping their salaries in line with wage levels in the private sector.

The DPJ is trying to change this system. As part of its manifesto for last year's Lower House election, the party promised to give public servants all their basic labor rights and to allow their salaries to be determined through negotiation.

The ruling party also cited such wage bargaining as a means to cut the overall government labor costs by 20 percent.

But the authority points out the difficulty of determining salaries through negotiation because of the fact that the government, unlike a private-sector company, does not face the risk of bankruptcy.

The authority also wants the government to make clear its purpose in reconsidering the restrictions on labor rights.

This is a reasonable argument. There is nothing wrong with the government seeking to guarantee all workers their fundamental labor rights. But doing so in order to cut personnel expenses is like trying to buy fish at a vegetable shop.

Even under the current system, the salaries of central government employees have been falling. The salary of a section chief in a ministry was 12.8 percent lower in 2009 than in 1998, before the decline began. The paychecks of a section chief in a local branch of a ministry have fallen 17.5 percent during the period.

These falls are due mainly to the personnel authority's recommendations. Another factor has been the widening of the scope of companies used in measuring the wage level, from companies with 100 or more employees to those with 50 or more.

The labor unions of government employees are unlikely to accept any further cuts in wages.

This is not the only questionable DPJ proposal for slashing labor costs.

The proposal to transfer central government employees to local governments is another example. The step would certainly lower the state's personnel costs but the central government would have to hand over the revenue sources needed to finance the salaries of the transferred bureaucrats. The effects of the measure would not be clear until detailed plans to eliminate waste due to overlapping services provided by both the central and local governments were offered.

Internal affairs minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi says the government can cut its labor costs by 170 billion yen ($2 billion) by reducing new hires by about 3,000 for 15 years.

But this approach would reduce the jobs available to young people and distort the age structure of the government workforce.

We need to take into account the likely negative effects of these proposals. There is debate within the Cabinet on the 1.5 percent or more salary cuts.

Formulating the budget for next fiscal year is a major challenge and, with debate on the consumption tax hike now unavoidable, the government's labor costs should not be regarded as untouchable.

That makes it all the more important for the government to lay out a grand vision for spending cuts. Piecemeal attempts to paper over problems, without a long-term vision, will only create distortions.

The ruling party should stop claiming it can still honor its impossible election promises and, if the government needs to make spending cuts, the tax-financed expenses of Diet members should be the first to feel the knife.

It is time for the government to explain the situation candidly and start a debate which is firmly grounded in reality.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 12