日企：不想离职？请进无聊办公室

Employees are given counseling to find new jobs in the Sony group, or at another company, it said. Sony also said that it offered workers early retirement packages that are generous by American standards: in 2010, it promised severance payments equivalent to as much as 54 months of pay.
索尼表示，员工可以接受专家咨询，在索尼内部或其他公司找到新的工作。而且他们为提前退休员工的资金补偿要比美国标准高得多：2010年，索尼承诺给员工的遣散费和他们工作54个月的工资一样多。

But the real point of the rooms is to make employees feel forgotten and worthless — and eventually so bored and shamed that they just quit, critics say.
但批评者说，“无聊办公室” 存在的真正意图是让员工感到自己被人遗忘，一无是处，最终在百无聊赖和颜面扫地中提交辞呈。

Labor practices in Japan contrast sharply with those in the United States, where companies are quick to lay off workers when demand slows or a product becomes obsolete.
日本和美国的劳动法差别巨大，当市场需求减缓、产品过时后，美国的公司有权迅速裁员。

It is cruel to the worker, but it usually gives the overall economy agility. Some economists attribute the lack of a dynamic economy in Western Europe to labor laws similar to Japan’s that restrict layoffs.
这种做法对员工来说很残酷，但通常却能让整个经济周转更灵活敏捷。有些经济学家认为，西欧经济衰微的主要原因就是采用了同日本类似的劳动法，限制了公司的裁员能力。

Japan’s biggest companies appear to be imitating Sony. Local media reports say many of them, including Panasonic, NEC and Toshiba, use the oidashibeya, or chase-out rooms, and similar tactics.
日本最大的几家公司似乎都在学索尼的做法。当地媒体报道包括松下、NEC、东芝在内的公司都有这种“无聊办公室”，采取的策略也大致相同。

In May, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported that an employee at a Panasonic unit was being required to spend his days in a room staring at monitors to catch irregularities.
五月，日本报纸《朝日新闻》报道，松下要求它的一位员工整日待在办公室里，坐在电脑显示屏前监测有无不正常情况出现。

Last year, a Tokyo court ordered Benesse, an educational services company, to reinstate a worker who claimed she had been required to do demeaning, menial tasks after resisting pressure to leave.
去年东京一法庭要求日本教育服务贝乐思公司恢复一位员工职位，据称这位员工在拒绝辞职后一直被要求做卑微下贱、有损人格的工作。