WINNERS AND^487
line, moreover, is trained to do a range of tasks, and an interruption
is not an opportunity to rest but rather to do something else. (None
of this segmentation—"that's not my job"—which can be "murder"
in work that brings together different trades.) In Japan, the worker
has and feels a duty to be useful at all times.
All of this may sound good, but it is not easy, nor is it kind to the
organism or the ego. It entails a rigorous subordination of the
person to superiors and to the group. The company has a thousand
ways to reward the cooperative worker, to punish the nonconformist.
Groups that make trouble can see their tasks turned over to an
outside supplier. Firms like Toyota swallow their employees; they
have their own calendar, independent of national holidays and
weekends (but most Japanese have no religious sabbath). What with
overtime and commuting, workers are often away from home eleven
and twelve hours a day; but that goes for cadres and bosses too.
That's where wives come in: they rear the children and put them to
bed before Father comes home. Off can mean on: 40 percent of the
manufacturing employees work more than one of their days off each
month; 30 percent more than five extra days a month. Most of them
engage in company-sponsored activities on at least one holiday a
month; a third do more than that. The company makes this easy,
what with private recreational facilities, organized activities, and
assiduous monitors. Ask a Japanese worker what he does, and he'll
tell you the name of his company.^27
Observers have justiy contrasted this teamwork, this sacrifice of the
individual to the group, and yes, this hyperintensification of labor, to
the adversarial relationship that embodies and sanctions the self-
respect of Western labor. In effect, the American firm is pluralistic:
- Note that things might have gone differently. In the postwar years, Japanese labor,
often led by militant Communists, adopted an combative mode that was rejected and
abandoned only after some fierce battles with company unions. The American occu
pation played its role: initially, it opened the door by legalizing trade unions; subse-
quendy, its primary concern was to tame the unions by way of reducing Soviet
influence.
T The economist Harvey Leibenstein states the contrast in general terms: "... the
ideal in the West is a short-run contractual view or contractual ideal of firm associa
tion rather than a long-run belonging ideal. There is a sense in which the Western ap
proach represents a series of contracts... involves devotion to a particular skill or job
(even a 'property right' in the job) rather than loyalty to the firm in general"—"Japan
ese Management System," p. 9. See p. 11 for contrasting results of attitude surveys:
in 1976 49 percent of Japanese workers said they should help others when their own
tasks were completed; only 16 percent of American workers felt that way.