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On February 17, the policy research chiefs of the DPJ, LDP and Komeito met inside the Diet, and agreed on temporary special measures legislation regarding salary cuts for national civil servants, in order to ensure sources of funding for recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake.
The content of the agreement, based on National Personnel Authority recommendations for fiscal 2011, are that salaries for national civil servants should be reduced by an average of 0.23% starting retrospectively from April 1 of last year, as well as salaries for fiscal 2012 and 2013 being reduced, as a special measure, by an average of 7.8%. The government bill, which proposed reducing salaries for 2012 and 2013, without implementing the recommendation of the National Personnel Authority for fiscal 2011, will be scrapped before deliberations on it start, and working level deliberations will begin to revise the legislation based on the proposal submitted by the LDP and Komeito.
In addition, it was agreed to postpone abolishing interim measures (relief measures) for structural salary reforms, which centre on salary reductions for middle-aged and elderly workers, until after the aforesaid special measures legislation has ended, and to include in the revised legislation provisions for an exclusion period (not to exceed six months and to be stipulated by government ordinance) for Japan Self Defense Force personnel and others, in honour of the hard work that had been undertaken in the disaster-affected areas by the more than one hundred thousand SDF troops and others who had been dispatched there following the disaster, as had been specified in the original government proposal.
With regard to the salaries of civil servants at the local government level, the parties confirmed their intention of including a supplementary resolution during debate of the legislation that would refer to the way in which local authorities should respond to this issue, taking into account relevant legislation regarding local government workers and the objectives of the aforesaid special measures legislation.
The policy research chiefs also agreed to call for an inter-party meeting of diet affairs chiefs to be held in the near future. Based on the conclusion of inter-party deliberations regarding the temporary special measures legislation regarding salaries, this meeting would work to create a suitable environment for engaging in debate and reaching agreement regarding the four bills relating to reform of the national civil servants system. These four bills include provisions for reforming the way in which senior civil servants are promoted, granting national civil servants working in the clerical field the right to conclude agreements, abolishing the National Personnel Authority recommendation system and establishing a civil servants agency.
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