經濟學人 | 職權霸凌:日本「社畜」的悲慘生活

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The Economist-20200613 期「Business」Japan’s bullying bosses: Anger management

02 中文導讀 日本職場中，新人工作嚴苛到了極點，當上司的出氣筒、替罪羊是家常便飯，刻板的等級觀和約定俗成的終身僱傭制也讓「社畜」沒有反撲的權利。越來越多的人深受「職權騷擾」所害，6月1日起日本實施的一項新勞動法首次明確規定企業管理人員不能利用手中職權欺負員工，如有違反將受到處罰。但此法暫時僅適用於大企業且未規定具體的懲罰措施，想要撼動日本長期形成的刻板職場文化還形同虛設。03 原文閱讀 486 words

Japan’s bullying bosses: Anger management

A new law targets tyrannical executives

AS HONDA SOICHIRO built his company from a small producer of engines to attach to bicycles into a global carmaking giant, he developed a reputation as a talented engineer and a maverick executive. He was also known to be an exacting boss, even a violent one. 「When he got mad, he blindly reached for anything lying around, and started throwing whatever was in reach randomly at people,」 one former executive later recalled. Such fiery tempers remain all too common among Japanese managers. A Japanese psychologist even coined a term to describe the particular abuse that the country’s supervisors pile upon some of their employees: pawahara, or power harassment.

>> pawahara: 日語「パワハラ」，意思是工作場所中的「霸凌」，指上級對下級的排擠和欺凌。

>> harassment: /ˈharəsm(ə)nt/ [U] when someone behaves in an unpleasant or threatening way towards you 騷擾 SYN persecution, harrying. 

power harassment 職權騷擾
<African-Americans have been complaining about police harassment for years.> 美國黑人多年來一直抱怨受到警察的騷擾。

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Complaints of harassment in the workplace have been growing in recent years, hitting a record high of 82,797 in 2018, up from 32,242 a decade earlier. In 2016 the country’s labour ministry found that a third of Japanese workers had experienced power harassment in the past three years. The trend worried the government enough to spur recent passage of anti-harassment legislation. As of June 1st, Japanese firms are required to have clear policies in place and to create internal systems for reporting and verifying claims of abuse.

At the extreme end, workplace bullying can still include physical violence of the sort displayed by Honda. More typically, it manifests itself in all manner of verbal, emotional and psychological abuse. Japan’s labour ministry defines six categories of power harassment: physical attacks, mental attacks, social isolation, excessive demands, demeaning demands and privacy infringements. 參考翻譯及翻譯思路語音講解見【精讀社區】Suicides linked to power harassment are not uncommon. Cases cut across sectors and classes. One MP from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party resigned from the party after a recording surfaced that allegedly captured her hitting an assistant as well as calling him 「baldy」.

Although bad bosses are a universal phenomenon, Japanese workplaces can be particularly conducive to the worst sort of behaviour. Hierarchies are rigid and deeply rooted. What bosses see as tough love can come across as hurtful to junior employees, especially as behavioural norms change between generations, says Inao Izumi of Cuore C Cube, the consultancy that first defined pawahara. The inflexibility of Japan’s labour market compounds the problem. 「People can’t easily quit if they hate their boss and companies can’t easily fire bad bosses,」 says Rochelle Kopp of Japan Intercultural Consulting.

Critics counter that the new law is both too vague and too toothless to help put-upon workers. Small and medium-sized firms do not have to comply until 2022. The law does not apply to part-time workers, who make up more than a third of the Japanese labour force. Nor does it specify punishments for harassers, leaving it up to companies to decide what action to take. 「The law merely warns offenders—it’s like a yellow card,」 says Kaneko Masaomi of the Workplace Harassment Research Institute. Until bad bosses have to worry about being sent off the pitch, their untoward actions are unlikely to stop.

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