The civil service needs to adopt private-sector labor-management relations so the government can propose wage and job cuts while public servants can counter with collective-bargaining, newly appointed administrative reform minister Yoshimi Watanabe said Thursday.
Calling such a relationship the first step to speed up reforms of the civil service, Watanabe, an outspoken Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker, argued that public servants must brace for future restructuring but be armed with basic labor rights, including collective-bargaining and the right to strike.
"I think it's necessary to give them the rights in one package" together with an evaluation system for public servants, Watanabe said in an interview.
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