The Democratic Party of Japan will soon draw up a plan for changing the way that pay for national civil servants is determined and for cutting the number of bureaucrats as well, party officials said Sunday.
The party is looking to fulfill a campaign election pledge to cut ¥1.1 trillion from civil servants' pay by fiscal 2013, the officials said.
The DPJ expects its goal of effecting a 20 percent cut to be achieved equally by changing the process for determining pay and reducing the ranks of the bureaucracy, they said.
As of fiscal 2009, there were about 575,000 national civil servants, including those working in administrative offices and in the Self-Defense Forces. Their pay came to about ¥5.3 trillion.
The DPJ made the pledge in response to criticism that civil servants are treated too well compared with their counterparts in the private sector.
Their income is determined by annual recommendations from the National Personnel Authority, which calculates pay based on salaries at businesses with at least 50 employees.
But given some of the privileges that civil servants get, such as the basically secure nature of their jobs and availability of inexpensive public residences, they are paid too well, critics say.
Under the DPJ plan, the government would have the personnel authority take salary levels at smaller companies into account.