9 The Japanese worker

In Japan, there is a close relationship between the worker and his company. Employees work hard and do hours of unpaid overtime to make their firms more efficient. If necessary, they give up weekends with the family to go on business trips. They are loyal to their organizations and totally involved with them. For example, many of them live in company houses, their friends are people they work with, and in their spare time they do sports and other activities organized by their employers.

The system of lifetime employment creates a strong link between the enterprise and its workforce. It covers about 35^ of the working population. Generally, when a person joins a firm after leaving high school or university, he expects to stay with that firm until he retires, lie has a secure job for life. There­fore, he will not be laid off if the company no longer needs him because there is no work. Instead, it will retrain him for anoth­er position.

The pay of a worker depends on his seniority, that is to say, on the years he has been with the firm. The longer he stays there, the higher his salary will be. When he is JO or 40 years old, therefore, he cannot afford to change jobs. If he did move, he would also lose valuable fringe benefits. Promotion depends on seniority as well. Japanese managers are rarely very young, and chief executives are at least 60, and very often 70 years old.

Questions:

1. What is the relationship between the worker and his company in Japan?

2. What shows that the workers are loyal to their company?

3. What does the system of lifetime employment mean?

4. What does the pay of a worker depend on?

5. Why are Japanese managers rarely young?

10 Student life

What is it like, being a student at Oxford? Like all British universities, Oxford is a state university, not a private one. Students are selected on the basis of their results in the national examinations or the special Oxford entrance exams. There are many applicants, and nobody can get a place by paying a fee.

Teaching is pleasantly informal and personal; a typical under­graduate will spend an hour a week with his or her tutor, perhaps in the company of one other student. Each of them will have written an essay for the tutor, which serves as the basis for discussion, argument and the exposition of ideas, it the end of the hour the students go away with a new essay title and a list of books that might be helpful in preparing for the essay.

Other kinds of teaching such as lectures and seminars are normally optional. So, in theory, if you are good at reading, thinking and writing quickly, you can spend five days out of seven being idle: sleeping, taking part in sports, in student clubs, in acting and singing, in arguing, drinking, having parties. In practice, most students at Oxford are enthusiastic about the academic life, and many of the more conscientious ones work for days at each essay, sometime's/sitting up through the night with a wet towel round their heads.

At the end of three years, all students face a dreadful ordeal, "Finals", the final examinations. After four or five days of this torture they come into the sunlight and stagger off for the biggest party of them all.

Questions:

1. What kind of university is Oxford?

2. How are students selected?

3. What is teaching like at Oxford?

4. Why do Oxford students have so much free time?

5. What do all students face at the end of three years?