追い出し部屋

雑誌New Yorkerの今週号はスター記者の一人であるEvan Osnosが寄稿しています。最近トランプ関連の記事しか書いていないですがそれは危機感の裏返しかもしれません。トランプ本人がやばいのは承知の事実になっていますが、米国の官僚組織までズタズタにしているという現状を今回の記事で書いてくれています。

The Political SceneMay 21, 2018 Issue

Trump vs. the “Deep State”

How the Administration’s loyalists are quietly reshaping American governance.

By Evan Osnos

トランプは何よりもLoyalty（忠誠心）を大事にしていることは以下のようなエピソードからでも伺えます。政治の世界ならまだしも行政組織にもLoyaltyを求めているのです。考えの違う人もあえて取り込もうとしたTeam of Rivalsというオバマの発想が遠い昔の出来事になっています。。。

Republican think tanks and donors succeeded in installing preferred nominees. The earliest wave arrived from the Heritage Foundation; subsequent ones came from Charles and David Koch’s network of conservative advocacy groups and from the American Enterprise Institute. But the White House maintained a virtual blockade against Republicans who had signed letters opposing Trump’s candidacy. “I’ve been asked, ‘Can you recommend somebody for this or that position?’ ” Elliott Abrams, a foreign-affairs official under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, told me. “I’ve come up with the perfect person, and the people I’m talking to at State or Defense say, ‘Oh, my God, she’s great. But she didn’t sign one of the letters, did she?’ ‘Yeah, she did.’ ‘O.K., we’re done here.’ ”

The White House brought in an array of outsiders, who, at times, ran into trouble. As an assistant to the Secretary of Energy, the Administration installed Sid Bowdidge, whose recent employment had included managing a Meineke Car Care branch in Seabrook, New Hampshire. Bowdidge departed after it emerged that he had called Muslims “maggots.” In December, Matthew Spencer Petersen, a nominee to the federal bench, became a brief online sensation when Senator John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, asked him a series of basic law-school questions, which revealed that Petersen had never argued a motion, tried a case, or taken a deposition by himself. Embarrassing details came out about other judicial nominees: Brett Talley, who had never tried a case in federal court, wandered cemeteries hunting for ghosts; Jeff Mateer had called transgender children part of “Satan’s plan.” All three nominations were withdrawn.

トランプ政権の意図に沿わない人物への処遇の一つとして日本人にはおなじみの「追い出し部屋」が使われているそうです。日本すげえの人の出番ですね（苦笑）

In Washington, the tactic of marooning civil servants in obscure assignments is known as sending them to the “turkey farm.” The turkey farms are reminiscent of the “rubber rooms” of New York City. Until the practice was banned, in 2010, the city’s Department of Education exiled hundreds of troublesome teachers to reassignment centers, where they idled, sometimes for years, reading newspapers and dozing. An Asia specialist assigned to the turkey farm likened the experience to a Japanese tradition in which unwanted workers are relegated to a “banishment room,” to encourage them to resign out of boredom and shame. Another turkey-farm inhabitant, who has held senior intelligence and national-security posts, told me that he joined the government during the Reagan Administration and never conceived of himself as an opponent of Trump. “I’m a Reagan holdover,” he said, shaking his head in bewilderment. “I sometimes don’t go in before ten, and then leave before five. You just float.” (Asked about the complaints, the spokesperson said that the State Department is “continuing to highly value career employees.”)

banishment roomはWikipediaでも見出しになっています。馴染みのある概念は英語で読んでもスラスラ入りますね。こんなことに馴染んでいるのは悲しいことですが。。。

(Wikipedia)

A banishment room (also known as a chasing-out-room and a boredom room) is a modern employee exit management strategy whereby employees are transferred to another department where they are assigned meaningless work until they become disheartened enough to quit.[1][2][3] Since the resignation is voluntary, the employee would not be eligible for certain benefits. The legality and ethicality of the practice is questionable and may be construed as constructive dismissal in some regions.

The practice, which is not officially acknowledged, is common in Japan which has strong labor laws and a tradition of permanent employment.

動画にも登場していますが、日本文化に詳しいロシェル・カップさんの説明もわかりやすいです。

OIDASHIBEYA – JAPANESE PURGATORY

Aug 12, 2014

By Rochelle Kopp, Managing Principal, Japan Intercultural Consulting

In the United States, the concept of “at will employment” means that employees can quit their jobs whenever they would like, and that companies can fire employees whenever they would like.  In a sense, it’s the opposite of Japan’s lifetime employment custom.  As any American employee who has experienced being fired can attest, it’s certainly not pleasant and can lead to depression and many other problems. And indeed in the U.S. there are many people who have lost their jobs and cannot find new ones, and become the “long-term unemployed.”  But the ability to hire and fire as needed is one of the underpinnings of the U.S. economy’s flexibility, and is something that companies count on in order to remain competitive.

Of course, when it comes to firing even in the United States it’s not always wise for a company to fire people simply whenever it wants to. To avoid legal problems it behooves a company to document the economic need for layoffs or the problems with the performance of an individual employee being let go. But still, letting people go is something relatively straightforward for American firms, and the culture in general supports it.

In contrast, Japanese companies are barred both by societal and legal constraints that make it very difficult to fire employees.  Historically, that led to the phenomenon of the madogiwazoku – literally, the tribe that sits by the windows.  Employees whose services were no longer needed, but that the company could not or did not want to fire, would be given a pleasant spot by the window to while away working hours by reading the newspaper.  However, as the Japanese economy has had to deal with years upon years of recession, and the increasingly stiff winds of global competition, many Japanese companies are finding themselves with more redundant staff than could fit at the window seats. This is particularly true for many companies in Japan’s electronics industry, which is having a lot of difficulty these days and feels the need to shed many employees who were hired during the boom years.

「追い出し部屋」をどう訳すかは英語を使う本人に託されるでしょうから英訳は変わる可能性があります。ニューヨークタイムズではchasing-out roomとなっています。

Layoffs Taboo, Japan Workers Are Sent to the Boredom Room

By HIROKO TABUCHI AUG. 16, 2013

Sony, Mr. Tani’s employer of 32 years, consigned him to this room because they can’t get rid of him. Sony had eliminated his position at the Sony Sendai Technology Center, which in better times produced magnetic tapes for videos and cassettes. But Mr. Tani, 51, refused to take an early retirement offer from Sony in late 2010 — his prerogative under Japanese labor law.

So there he sits in what is called the “chasing-out room.” He spends his days there, with about 40 other holdouts.

“I won’t leave,” Mr. Tani said. “Companies aren’t supposed to act this way. It’s inhumane.”

The standoff between workers and management at the Sendai factory underscores an intensifying battle over hiring and firing practices in Japan, where lifetime employment has long been the norm and where large-scale layoffs remain a social taboo, at least at Japan’s largest corporations.

トランプがアメリカ政治・行政に与えるダメージというのは思った以上に根深いものになっていることがこのあたりの危機感がMichiko KakutaniにThe Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trumpを、Stephen GreenblattにTyrant: Shakespeare On Powerという本を出させている気がします。

官僚制に関して意外だったのが、中国ではより柔軟に運用されているということ。先日紹介したForeign Affairsで取り上げていました。

Autocracy With Chinese Characteristics

Beijing's Behind-the-Scenes Reforms

By Yuen Yuen Ang

CHINESE BUREAUCRACY 101

In the United States, politics are exciting and bureaucracy is boring. In China, the opposite is true. As a senior official once explained to me, “The bureaucracy is political, and politics are bureaucratized.” In the Chinese communist regime, there is no separation between political power and public administration. Understanding Chinese politics, therefore, requires first and foremost an appreciation of China’s bureaucracy. That bureaucracy is composed of two vertical hierarchies—the party and the state—replicated across the five levels of government: central, provincial, county, city, and township. These crisscrossing lines of authority produce what the China scholar Kenneth Lieberthal has termed a “matrix” structure. In formal organizational charts, the party and the state are separate entities, with Xi leading the party and Premier Li Keqiang heading up the administration and its ministries. In practice, however, the two are intertwined. The premier is also a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top body, which currently has seven members. And at the local level, officials often simultaneously hold positions in both hierarchies. For example, a mayor, who heads the administration of a municipality, is usually also the municipality’s deputy chief of party. Moreover, officials frequently move between the party and the state. For instance, mayors may become party secretaries and vice versa.