No justice! No peace!

So get this, the Japanese government is cutting the salaries a bunch of its contracted workers, so they're going on strike this month.

For 4 hours.

Yeah, they're striking for 4 hours. Nothing says "we'll leverage our demands by paralyzing our employer" like a 4 hour strike. Union representatives added that if their demands are not met, they'll "make scary faces" and "jump up and down a lot".

What a bunch of power-playing masters of negotiation. Fear them.

My boss told me that when he was teaching English for companies in Japan, the workers would go on strike from 11:30-12:30 in the afternoon. During their lunch break they'd sit there with signs, then return to work at 12:39 on the dot.

I have over some of these guys working under me now, so I asked em how many were striking and they came back saying that no one is interested in striking and that they'd all be at work. But it turns out they're not allowed into work, so even if they're not interested in taking part they still have to strike and take 4 hours of no-pay time in the shorts.



That union doesnt sound like such a great idea anymore, does it there Shinsuke.

I get unions. I get why they started. But I also get what they've turned into. It doesn't really seem to jive well with the Japanese personality though. This isn't the Land of the Free, Home of the Cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face. Aside from the residents of St Petersburg, no one is more willing to use their house for firewood than a "Union Guy". Food schmood, we'll deal with that later. You can take the food off my plate, you corporate bastards, but you can't take my pride!! Now pay me $35 for driving this forklift or we'll all stop working, harrass Mexicans who do it for us, and badmouth Chinamen for stealing our jobs when we prevent our steel mill from competing with them!



O rly? Confrontational nature of this sign aside, if one of my employees had this sign, I would immediately assume that they had an inflated sense of entitlement and would do the minimum amount of work possible. If they were, for whatever reason, authorized to leave early, they'd be the first one out the door, but if asked to stay 10 minutes more to take care of something, would start shouting union bylaws.

That being said, it's a shame that the Japanese government is shorting these people like $300 a month.. But weak-ass reactions like this make it apparent why the Japanese middle-class are still working like slaves for low salaries and put up with sub-standard living conditions.

Other than that, I was sitting my couch after eating an entire bag of shrooms and smoking an ounce of hash work the other day and I got a kick out of this video.



I think it caught my attention because I completely flipped the fuck out cuz I had just eaten a bunch of shrooms the video is shot in one take, like those Ebay commercials.