Spring Labor Offensive has begun campaigns in many workplaces. ‘The offensive has ended its life’ – a phase repeated many times. In the year 2019 the saying seems to be true. The situation in workplaces, however, is harsh for workers and they desperately need labor offensive. Workers have a history, experiences and legacies. Let’s fight so that the year 2019 will be a year of retrieval of joint struggles.

LET’S RETRIEVE WORKERS’ LIFELINE, JOINT STRUGGLES!

Workers’ demands and wage hikes are not announced publicly

The Labor-Employer Forum sponsored by the Keidanren, or the Japan Business Federation, began on January 28, and, simultaneously, did the labor offensive 2019.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has committed in the annual labor struggles, ostensibly playing a mediator’s role, for consecutive five years to show off his zeal to employers to help raise wages. But this year he keeps a low profile, observing cautiously performance of businesses impacted by the trade conflict between the United States and China. He has just urged employers to hike wages. The Keidanren, however, expresses a feeling of discomfort, saying that the administrative wing cannot intervene in the pay increase campaigns.

The Rengo, or the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, proposes a 4% increase, which is a total of a 2% of basic salary raise and another 2% of the annual growth rate. Reportedly, the confederation has a policy to correct gaps produced intensely between big businesses and medium-small-sized companies.

A focal point this year will be put on behaviors of trade unions of automobile industries, including Toyota. The Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers’ Unions (JAW, 780,000 members), which used to play a key role in setting a salary increase level, presents a policy not to announce a unified demand on the basic salary increase rate. It is reported that its stance is to focus on rectification of pay gaps among workers. Big companies set a higher basis of salaries, while the smaller enterprises do a lower one, thus discrepancies grow bigger, if the rate is made public. A demand to set ‘an absolute sum of wage’ can be appreciated if it is realized, as it may bridge the gaps.

Will Rengo end its life, too?

Everyone feels something deceptive, however, about the Rengo’s policy: the confederation admits a fact that companies should not publicly announce individual demands of hike and results of salary negotiation talks between labor and management. That means workers’ wage struggles are not regarded as labor offensive. The Spring Offensive appears to have terminated in both nominal and real terms. In other words, the Rengo, a national center, has died.

The spring labor offensive represents workers’ joint trade union struggles covering unions of many industries. It began to struggle in 1955, integrating unions of eight industries. The campaign tactic is characterized by conditions in the country: comparing with trade unions of foreign countries where unions are organized on the industry basis, in Japan enterprise-based unions are of a usual case, in which a labor union bases on a contract of employment between workers and employers. The said tactic is valid to overcome this weakness.

If trade unions of big corporations and the federation of employers do not make public the sums demanded by unions and concluded in the subsequent negotiation, a unified struggle cannot be fought. A national center, which ensures workers to get united to fight, too, will vanish in both theoretical and practical terms. Do Japanese workers need a national center, or not?

An 8-hour work system guarantees worker’s life

Today so-called irregular workers occupy almost 40% of the total workforce and over 20 million workers are regarded as ‘working poor’, whose annual income is on the line of minimum wage. In the municipality offices across the country, too, one-third of employees work on the irregular basis. Wage gaps in the public sector are bigger than those of the private sector.

The problem does not remain here. An organizational ratio of workers into trade unions is only 17% here in Japan. That means many workers are not only unable to lead a decent life but also deprived of potential to fight.

A united struggle is indispensable to save workers from the working-poor plight; that is to guarantee the minimum wage, to pay an identical salary to an identical job, and implement the 8-hour work system which prevents workers from dying from overwork and mental diseases.

Spring Labor Offensive of the year 2019 must be fought to declare retrieving joint struggles of workers. Get ready and resolved.

February 19, 2019