Abstract
In January 2016, Prime Minister Abe announced his plan to promote “equal pay for equal work.” In the process, he generated “the political slogan that the regular-irregular inequality required ‘equal pay for equal work’” (Kanki, 2019, p.89). The government needed to “solve,” in other words, the “inequality” in the “treatment” of regular workers and irregular workers.
The slogan obviously assumes that there is a problem to be “solved.” In the process, it leaves unaddressed the details of the objectives in question and the policies proposed. It leaves unanalyzed the costs, benefits, and likely effectiveness of any measures involved. It leaves undisclosed who actually promoted the policy and why. Necessarily, it also leaves hidden what those undisclosed actors might actually be trying to accomplish through their policies.
Since 2016, the Japanese government has at least nominally promoted “evidence-based policy making” (EBPM) principles. The equal-pay-for-equal-work debate presents a near-perfect case for EBPM. Citizens need to know the substantive details of any policies proposed, and the logic and evidence behind them. Good governance dictates that the government invite critical examination and counter-proposals. EBPM principles would have promoted that process. Unfortunately, the government egregiously failed to follow those principles.
In the course of analyzing the government’s foray into the equal-pay-for-equal-work dispute,
I offer an introduction to EBPM principles. Note that were the government to take seriously those principles, it would need to explore the reasons behind the increased diversity of employment contracts across the developed world. In the process, it would probably also abandon terms like “difference (kakusa)” and “discrimination (sabetsu)” in discussing “regular” and “irregular” employment conditions.
