Japan Today Get your ticket to GaijinPot Expo 2024
national

60% still go to office despite state of emergency over virus: survey

39 Comments

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

© KYODO

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

39 Comments
Login to comment

There are many workers who actually don’t sit in front of a screen in order to make a living....

18 ( +18 / -0 )

"We assume many people still have to go to their office because of their duties, such as seal stamping, faxing"

16 ( +16 / -0 )

From Monday things will get stricter.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

The government should apply pressure directly on the management of companies. The employees for the most part are just doing whatever their management tells them. They may want to stay home, but unless their company tells them explicitly to do so, then they feel obliged to go to the office.

15 ( +15 / -0 )

Seal stamping and faxing. Moronic.

17 ( +18 / -1 )

@Burning Bush

This article is about office workers, not physical labour.

18 ( +22 / -4 )

"We assume many people still have to go to their office because of their duties, such as seal stamping, faxing" and other tasks related to paper documents, a Persol Research official said in analyzing the trend of slow permeation of telework in Japan.

Duh! Welcome to Japan, been this way for a couple of decades now!

12 ( +12 / -0 )

The food at the supermarket you buy everyday has to get grown, processed, transported and cleaned.

All that Netflix you're watching requires an internet connection, that means technicians, engineers, softwares guys etc. all have to work.

How about your lights, are they still working?

Your water?

All this needs workers, you may be sneering at some guy going to work during the "state of emergency" but he may very well be going to fix the sewer pipe that sends water to your home.

And of course you want toilet paper, but nobody should be going to the factory to make it right?

None of which gets done in the offices of Tokyo!

15 ( +19 / -4 )

All this needs workers, you may be sneering at some guy going to work during the "state of emergency" but he may very well be going to fix the sewer pipe that sends water to your home.

Yup, nobody sneers at the guys doing essential services. But from the article:

We assume many people still have to go to their office because of their duties, such as seal stamping, faxing" 

I wasn’t aware that affixing seals and sending faxes was so critical it required 70% of the workforce to be in the office.

>

9 ( +12 / -3 )

The transportation company which delivers your food to supermarkets and Amazon products to your house needs office workers.

Yes, and with a laptop, and internet connection and a few pieces of software, the vast majority of them can do what needs to be done from their home.

6 ( +11 / -5 )

There’s a long way to go to reach the 70% target? Just shutdown Nippon Kaigi! They don’t seem to grasp the concept of proactive measures. It’s only reactive, which will end up costing the country ten times more than shutting down for a month.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

The food at the supermarket you buy everyday has to get grown, processed, transported and cleaned.

All that Netflix you're watching requires an internet connection, that means technicians, engineers, softwares guys etc. all have to work.

Wow! For once I agree with Burning Bush. I drive into work myself to an empty university and to my own office to make video lessons explaining the textbook to my students. No problem here, otherwise these online courses will be a dang JOKE. Someone has to do this and making video lessons at home isn't practical. Same with the accountant that makes sure the workers killing that chicken you want to buy at Spina gets paid. It is insane to expect all workers to stay home because you will be starving in two weeks, I assure you. Then there is just the issue of normalcy. People NEED to get out of their tiny condo prisons, so staggering work shifts so as to make sure everyone is socially distant from each other is do-able and probably recommendable. Sometimes you have to see the big picture. I don't recommend "opening up" the economy. Historical note: after WWI everyone forgot about the pandemic and social distancing laws and masks (back then in 1918, there was a law to wear masks) and everyone celebrated. The outcome of that one celebration had more people dying from the pandemic than from all of the dead from WWI. It was horrific. Same thing will happen with Trumps gambit, but you can open up intelligently, this business on this day and that business on that day and to have socially distancing take place in those businesses seems workable. But at the end of the day, there are essential workers, and sometimes the push a pen or type in a computer. They don't work, then we die.

-6 ( +4 / -10 )

What, so essential workers make up 60% of the working population?

1 ( +2 / -1 )

So the rest of the developed world has largely managed to be flexible and find workable solutions to this problem, but Japan is as rigid as uncooked spaghetti, and completely unable to change its ways.

This is in many ways no surprise, but when you consider that Japan has been aware for decades of the potential for a massive earthquake hitting the Tokyo region, it is incomprehensible that there isn’t a workable emergency solution for everyone to fall back on.

8 ( +10 / -2 )

I, for one, am glad my company hasn't bought into the ridiculous hype around this new type of flu. I am able to continue earning money for my family, which is the most important thing.

-10 ( +5 / -15 )

None of the corporates have a social responsibility in place..

In pandemic situations, social responsibility is to reduce the total number of people coming to office, so that those who essentially have to travel for work, face lesser threat of infection.

The reality of this nation and it's work culture is that even IT employees are asked to report for work, despite facilities for telework being available.

Essential services have to continue, but with office workers and shoppers off the road, they are better off.

The reality is that you can't keep shut downs for a long time... So first you go in for a total shut down, and then open up much later, with soft lockdowns still in place.... Japan is doing it the reverse way.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

I am working at a japanese company with a japanese management for many years.

Simple rule: Come to office or quit!

Nobody in the management cares about what Abe says or how bad the Virus situation is or will be.

As long as the japanese management refuse to jump in the 20th century, nothing will ever change!

12 ( +13 / -1 )

@no business. Yup, there is no business like show business and that is what it has become in a way.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

@FuzzyToday 07:38 am JST

The government should apply pressure directly on the management of companies. The employees for the most part are just doing whatever their management tells them. They may want to stay home, but unless their company tells them explicitly to do so, then they feel obliged to go to the office.

They don't just "feel" obliged. Unless the government gives them an order to stay home, the company explicitly permits or directs it or they have a statutorily valid reason (ex: they are already sick and are now taking sick leave), they are legally obliged to go to the office.

@HBJToday 09:37 am JST

This is in many ways no surprise, but when you consider that Japan has been aware for decades of the potential for a massive earthquake hitting the Tokyo region, it is incomprehensible that there isn’t a workable emergency solution for everyone to fall back on.

To be fair, if a massive earthquake hits Tokyo, its more likely that computers and advanced connections will be destroyed completely than sheets of paper and hanko.

-3 ( +2 / -5 )

The transportation company which delivers your food to supermarkets and Amazon products to your house needs office workers.

Dispatching can be done at home on a laptop and, if needed, a portable radio transmitter/receiver. HR, payroll, sales and a host of other duties can be done at home as well.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

@Kazuaki - That’s not the point. Every company that has an office in Tokyo - especially these huge national and multinational companies that have head offices - must surely have a contingency plan of what to do, and how to continue operating their businesses in an emergency.

If a huge earthquake hits Tokyo and people are literally unable to go to the office because of building destruction, or public transport stopping etc. what will they do?

This situation simply calls for companies to enact that plan now. The fact that it seems they have no solution to physically hanko-ing documents and faxing papers from the office itself suggests to me that almost all companies simply don’t have any contingency plans.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

This is a missed opportunity to do more tests and get companies scared into allowing telework.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

The transportation company which delivers your food to supermarkets and Amazon products to your house needs office workers.

A friend of mine has been doing that exact job for many years...FROM HOME.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Teleworking from home if the govt wants to defer the spreading of the covid 19.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

@Kazuaki Shimazaki

The point of my post is, urging people (i.e. employees) to not go to the office is meaningless unless the company's management is supporting and even mandating it. My point is, apply pressure in the right places i.e. on the senior management of companies.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

We all see even smart Japanese able managers exchanging in these comments sections with other smart managers but foreign cannot and will not change their mind, until the country is ruined (reminds me of the end of a war I forgot the name but for which that country wanted to be counted in...).

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

"We assume many people still have to go to their office because of their duties, such as seal stamping, faxing" and other tasks related to paper documents, a Persol Research official said in analyzing the trend of slow permeation of telework in Japan."

In a world where it's easy to digitally sign PDF files, and even where deliveries to my home in Japan are signed for in tablet devices, there's NO excuse for this.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

And so the current state/non-state of emergency limbo will continue, seemingly for an indefinite amount of time.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

If your boss says "don't come to work", you won't.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I think workers/companies just need time to plan and accept whats happening with their business. Need time to make preparations. I know I need to at least till the 27th to clear out all existing tasks and clear out the current work load before I can storm shutter the building secure my stocks (Porsche McClaren and many others) We can not just stop suddenly leaving our clients high dry on their JCI or maintenance or deliveries and handovers coming up on vehicles sold. But painfully by 27th I am ordering all who can to work from home to do so. Clients will be one by one basis and will not be allowed in the building. Only in the serive bays with the big 26 foot doors wide open and all fans on. This is the best I can do to keep revenue coming in to pay my people. The Virus sucks so bad. :-(.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I don't understand the number of negative votes per @Burning Bush comment.

Probably some people think that shops, clean water, functioning sewage and electricity are God-given goods.

In our country (Slovenia), such jobs are designated as "risk job" during an epidemic.

By government decree, such work is paid up to 40% more until the state of the epidemic is canceled.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

"We assume many people still have to go to their office because of their duties, such as seal stamping, faxing"

For a country that prides itself on its technical prowess, Japanese corporate culture often seems like it exists in the 1980's.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites