Monthly Pay Cut Proposal Likely for Japan Civil Servants

Tokyo (Jiji Press) - Japan's National Personnel Authority is likely to recommend late this month a cut in monthly salaries for national civil servants for fiscal 2011, sources told Jiji Press on Monday.
The likely cut comes after the authority found that private-sector pay data, the basis for its recommendations, showed the monthly salaries of government employees were estimated at several hundred yen higher than those of their private-sector counterparts.
It would be the third straight year of pay cut proposals.
The authority will make its recommendation on monthly salaries for national government employees for the current fiscal year ending in March 2012 to parliament and the cabinet.
After it swept to power in 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan banned the practice of "amakudari," under which senior ministry officials retire early to take lucrative jobs at organizations or companies overseen by their ministries.
The ban led to an increase in the number of older bureaucrats who earn more than equivalent employees in the private sector, the sources said.
As a result, the proposal of the personnel authority may well chiefly target older bureaucrats for pay cuts.
Usually, after the personnel authority makes a recommendation, the government makes its decision on civil servant pay at a meeting of cabinet ministers.
This year, however, the government has already presented legislation on pay cuts for national civil servants, making it unclear whether the changes recommended by the personnel authority will be implemented.
The personnel authority surveyed pay at about 10,500 private-sector companies with workforces of 50 or more nationwide, excluding Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, the three northeastern prefectures hit hardest by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The survey was carried out between June 24 and Aug. 10, about one and a half months later than in a normal year due to the March disaster.