Introduction : Changing Personnel Management and Employment Structure in the Public Sector

Abstract

While the public sector has been partly privatized and some of its social services outsourced, personnel management and pay systems of public sector employees have been revised. As a result, the number of regular employees has fallen and the number of temporary and part―time employees has increased, leading to a public sector working poor problem. The Japan Association for Social Policy Studies held the symposium “Changing Personnel Management and Employment Structure in the Public Sector” at the spring 2016 conference to discuss the current problems of workers in the public sector.The symposium consisted of four papers and two commentaries. In this article, the author has summarized the papers, comments and discussions by participants.In their presentations, the authors conducted discussion and debate about the following points : the impact of newly introduced personnel appraisal systems on the publicness and professional nature of public sector, the main features of the newly introduced personnel appraisal system in local governments, the conditions of temporary employees in public sector jobs along with low―paid workers in outsourced public services, and changes in childcare work caused by the privatization of childcare centers. In addition, some of the issues discussed in the symposium included the publicness and professionalism of public employment, changing demands of public service and duties of public servants, the relationship between diversified personnel appraisal systems and trade unions in local governments, and gender―related influences of public sector privatization.