Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

A JAPANESE FIRM IN MALAYSIA 121
employees. Sanusi recruited many relatives and other residents of his native
village. He was close to most of the veteran workers, in the older village-style
patron-client sense, and went out of his way to assist them in various ways. For
instance, a Malay worker asked the company–through Sanusi, in the latter’s
capacity as personnel manager–for a loan to purchase a motorcycle. Sanusi’s
Japanese superior refused the request, so rather than pass on a flat refusal, Sanusi
lent the worker money out of his own pocket. This was both to save face
personally, and to smooth over relations between workers and the Japanese
management because Sanusi knew that the latter did not understand workers’ real
needs.
Indeed, the Japanese managers did not appreciate the fact that Sanusi always
played this key role as cultural interpreter, and was the main channel for workermanagement
communication. He knew the Japanese way, but he did not accept it
where he saw it as detrimental to the workers’ interests. Sanusi appeared to be
very lazy to the Japanese because he insisted on leaving the office at 4.30pm each
day, the official office closing time. In the late 1970s the Japanese managers
showed their lack of appreciation of his conduct by giving him a slightly lower
bonus than that given to the Chinese managers, even though they had equal
seniority. What they did not understand was that he left at this time in order to play
golf at a prestigious golf club in Petaling Jaya, whose members included many highranking
Malay bureaucrats. His after-hours networking was crucial for the
company’s welfare if problems arose with labour, consumer groups,
environmental issues and so on. Unknown to the Japanese, Sanusi had used these
connections on many occasions to smooth over potential problems for the
company. He also used these networks to gain himself a position on the board of
directors of the company.
The Japanese managers also did not appreciate his informal efforts in the
Malay cultural context to promote the smooth running of labour relations in the
factory. He was a personal friend of the Malay secretary of the company’s works
committee before the two became personnel manager and union leader
respectively. Even though Sanusi’s status was now much higher and, in class
terms, opposed to that of his friend, he took pains to maintain the relationship.
Sometimes Sanusi took his friend to prestigious golf clubs. If his friend came to him
with a complaint from a union member, he would say, ‘Please try to calm the
issue. You don’t want to embarrass me in front of the Japanese do you?’ Through
this informal bargaining or ‘microdealing’ (Boulanger 1992:333), many labour
disputes were defused. By maintaining a peaceful industrial relations climate in the
factory, Sanusi was able to campaign for higher wages and benefits for workers
when he was part of the (mainly Japanese) team representing management during
collective bargaining negotiations. Over the years he made personal loans to many
workers, which were quite unrecoverable, and in this way personally diffused
dissatisfaction with the Japanese management’s policies. But the Japanese did not
observe these activities and gave him no credit. Rather, the Japanese were more
impressed by the behaviour of Cheng, the Chinese production manager who