Despite the continuing bleak employment picture, perhaps partly because of it, many Japanese working men and women say they are unhappy in their jobs. This is not surprising, since changes in the traditional workplace are occurring so rapidly that the old rules and procedures for minimizing employee discontent no longer seem adequate. To a large extent, the old-fashioned image of the company as a surrogate family is a thing of the past. Even so, the results of a recent nationwide Labor Ministry survey, showing that as many as nine out of 10 employees either have grievances against their companies or are worried about their jobs, are cause for serious concern.

A 90.9 percent dissatisfaction rate among employees -- most often involving complaints about pay and working hours -- is hardly a minimal figure. The urgency of the situation is underlined by the survey's other major finding, which was that 90 percent of the responding companies acknowledged having received complaints either directly from employees or through the in-house company union. What this proves beyond question is that most Japanese companies, at least among those that took part in the survey, have not set up any mechanism for dealing with mounting worker dissatisfaction as they shift from the old system of seniority-based wages and promotion to a new one that tends to favor merit.

Japanese companies have never embraced the practice, common in the West, of implementing massive layoffs during a business downturn. Yet current conditions have pushed Japanese corporate executives into taking steps in which the result is not so different, usually in the form of large-scale early-retirement programs and other staff downsizing and payroll trimming in the name of "restructuring." One element looming in the background of the Labor Ministry survey was the announcement this fall by the National Tax Administration that the number of employees working at private companies decreased last year for the first time in 50 years. So did the average income of these salaried workers, mainly because of reduced semiannual bonuses, even though wages rose slightly.