In Japan many workers for large corporations have a guarantee of lifetime employment. They will not be laid off during recessions or when the tasks they perform. are taken over by robots. To some observers, this is capitalism at its best, because workers are treated as people not things. Others see it as necessarily inefficient and believe it cannot continue if Japan is to remain competitive with foreign corporations more concerned about profits and less concerned about people. Defenders of the system argue that those who call it inefficient do not understand how it really works, In the first place not every Japanese worker has the guarantee of a lifetime job. The lifetime employment system includes only 'regular employees'. Many employees do not fall into this category, including all women. All businesses have many part-time and temporary employees. These workers are hired and laid off during the course of the business cycle just as employees in the United States are. These 'irregular workers' make up about 10 percent of the nonagricultural work force. Additionally, Japanese firms maintain some flexibility through the extensive use of subcontractors. This practice is much more common in Japan than in the United States. The use of both subcontractors and temporary workers has increased markedly in Japan since the 1974—1975 recession. All this leads some to argue that the Japanese system is not all that different from the American system. During recessions Japanese corporations lay off temporary workers and give less business to subcontractors. In the United States, corporations lay off those workers with the least seniority. The difference then is probably less than the term 'lifetime employment' suggests, but there still is a difference. And this difference cannot be understood without looking at the values of Japanese society. The relationship between employer and employee cannot be explained in purely contractual terms. Firms hold on to the employees and employees stay with one firm. There are also practical reasons for not jumping from job to job. Most retirement benefits come from the employer. Changing jobs means losing these benefits. Also, teamwork is an essential part of Japanese production. Moving to a new firm means adapting to a different team and at least temporarily, lower productivity and lower pay. The observers are divided with regard to their attitudes towards______.