without fresh borrowing the government will run out of money by October.
We have the somewhat embarrassing situation here presently where a handful of research scientists have already been laid off and re-employed on casual contracts of about ¥1000/h (minimum wage is ¥800), with the supposed promise of a proper job if and when the money comes through. But recruitment for these proper jobs (which are themselves only short term contracts, naturally) has been frozen. (Let's not even mention that under the new "formal" procedures, all recruitment has to take place via open competition.)
Various managers seem to be running round in a panic. Jules and I have been "warned" that JAMSTEC HQ has only actually guaranteed our salaries to the end of September, at which point (back in April when this budget-shuffling was organised) a tranche of soft money had been expected to appear. However, our contracts clearly run for a full fiscal year, so I am interested to see if they will actually try to renege on them. Given the parlous state of employee rights here, it wouldn't entirely surprise me. I don't think that JAMSTEC is actually out of money, it is just that the bureaucrats would have to agree to change their budget plans, which usually takes several months of discussions. They might consider it simpler to break the contracts.
We are off on holiday in the middle of September, and I wonder what we will return to in October...of course the most likely outcome is that the Govt will cobble together a budget, on a promise of an early election. But even so, the money probably won't percolate as far as JAMSTEC in time. I suppose if I actually cared, it would be quite stressful, but at the moment I can't seem to make myself feel particularly bothered either way. For the future of climate science in Japan, it might be better if this entire field was taken over by an institute that had more of a commitment to it.
(FWIW, the position we are currently recruiting for seems entirely unaffected, as that is coming from a different fund.)
9 comments:
I'm left with an image of your bench monkey, supervisor-less, roaming aimlessly through the mean streets of Yokohama. But perhaps alternative arrangements would be made...
I have no interest at all in employing a "bench monkey". Slavery is wrong. Furthermore, you need to be self-motivated to do climate sceince at JAMSTEC, or to have a chance at keeping your career alive outside Japan. Guess how many applicants for our job we had?
P.S. It would be us roaming the mean streets while the lucky employee enjoys all the advantages of JAMSTEC's phenomenal facilities.
Supervisor-less is pretty much standard operating practice here anyway.
Yes, with us walking the mean streets, the employee merely defaults to the usual JAMSTEC postition rather than getting to enjoy the super-enhanced jules&James supervisory experience.
38More interesting would be the number of Japanese folk who applied for the jobs. The rest of the world is desperate.
OK, OK, ix-nay on the ench-bay onkey-may rhetoric.
Seriously, my best wishes on all of this.
re: how many applications: 0?
Oten enough I fail to understand the humour, but nevermine...
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