Vicious spiral of rising unemployment rate is product of corporate
restructuring -- Akahata editorial, December 2, 2001

The unemployment rate for October marked a record 5.4 percent, with no
signs of falling. The Koizumi Cabinet must be held responsible for the 0.6
percentage point increase in the last six months.

The Public Management Ministry stated that permanent employment fell by
700,000 during the past year. Clearly, a major cause of the rising
unemployment rate is the restructuring schemes and personnel dismissals by
large corporations. Twenty major electronics firms and car makers with NTT
are now geared up to cut 300,000 jobs. The way to deal with unemployment is
not to create new jobless people.

Massive joblessness comes out of Koizumi "reform"

Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro takes such a high unemployment rate as
normal, saying that the progress of structural reform entails a rise in
unemployment for a time. He threateningly says the unemployment rate will
get higher unless reform goes ahead.

The opposite is the fact. The Koizumi "reform" is the major culprit for
the high unemployment rate. Takashi Imai, Federation of Economic
Organizations (Keidanren) president, plainly said that structural reform
means an increase in unemployment. Various estimates show that write-offs of
bad loans held by major banks and the further pursuit of restructuring will
give rise to a sharp increase in bankruptcy coupled with a million new
jobless people.

Government has a duty to stabilize living conditions and ensure jobs for
the people. The Koizumi Cabinet's call for massive unemployment is an
aberration even from the successive Liberal Democratic Party governments of
the past.

Not a major corporation currently pursuing corporate restructuring is
facing a vital choice between worker dismissals and going bust. All their
restructuring plans are motivated by their greed to secure high profits at
the expense of workers and subcontractors. Even the prime minister has to
admit that corporations must assume their social responsibility. Then, it is
the responsibility of the government to make corporations fulfill their
responsibility to defend jobs.

Just when the people have lost their jobs or are under the threat to lose
them, the government is about to completely deregulate labor regulations,
including setting up standards for dismissing workers and allowing temp
workers to work in all categories of jobs. If it becomes easier for
corporations to dismiss workers and hire temps in manufacturing,
restructuring will become more rampant and jobs will become more unstable.

What is more, the government policy of encouraging corporate
restructuring is contrary to the world trend by which social accountability
of corporations are sought more clearly than ever. In European Union (EU)
countries, it is obligatory for employers to make prior consultations with
workers before dismissing them. Regulation against dismissals may be
strengthened by giving workers the right to ask for a deferred decision.

The European Commission has begun to tackle the task of making
corporations assume their social responsibility to defend jobs by publishing
a political document promoting a European framework on social responsibility
of corporations.

The job situation in Japan is so serious that the United Nations social
rights convention committee has issued a recommendation. It demands that
Japan take steps to secure wage levels and job security for workers of age
45 and over who are the targets of restructuring, and to shorten the
excessively long working hours. The prime minister, who in the parliament
stated that he would make efforts to put the recommendation into effect, is
responsible to take effective steps.

Corporations must take social responsibility

The increase in unemployment caused by job cuts has produced a vicious
circle of a smaller income for the people, a deeper economic recession, and
higher unemployment and job insecurity. The more the Koizumi Cabinet is
committed to "structural reform," the deeper Japan's economic crisis will
become and more desolate the society will become.

A drastic policy of creating jobs to deal with the unemployment question
is indispensable to rehabilitate the Japanese economy. The task now is for
the government to legally regulate worker dismissals and restructuring by
corporations to make them fulfill their social responsibility and to
increase jobs by cutting working hours without pay cuts. (end)