Contradictions of corporate-conformist trade unions are showing --Focus of Japanese workers' spring struggle (Part 2)

The National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) and the National Spring Struggle Joint Struggle Committee in their struggle backs workers' demands to repel attacks by large corporations that include the abolition of the guaranteed annual wage increase system, narrowing and ending wage discrimination against women, opposition to corporate "streamlining" in the name of "restructuring", establishment of work rules in defense of job security and human rights, and prevention of planned adverse revisions in the labor laws. They combined these demands with the movement opposing a U.S. war on Iraq.

Failure of conformist ideology on wages

An important change is now taking place among corporate-conformist trade unions of large corporations.

The theoretic basis which these company unions use concerning wages is the so-called "pie theory." It is the argument that workers must first work to make a bigger pie before they get their bigger share of the pie as wages.

This call for making a bigger pie acknowledges the worker's claim for a wage increase, although it basically serves the interests of corporations always seeking increased profits as the imperative and then possibly allowing workers to get a share.

Large corporations have recently changed tack to cut wages after trade unions faithfully supported corporate restructuring schemes and current profits turned to the black. This means that the corporate conformism of these trade unions has completely gone bankrupt. Conformist trade unions are called into question for the very reason of their existence.

Toyota Motor Corp. earned over 1 trillion yen in combined profits last year. It expects a record profit close to 1.5 trillion yen in March 2003 when the accounting term ends. Its internal reserve has increased by 676.8 billion yen to 7.9 trillion yen. This means 32.9 million yen in secret profits per employee. Despite this accumulated profit, the company announced a de facto end to the annual base wage increase system, and in a published statement said that there should be no wage increase in the spring struggle negotiations.

The federation of all trade unions of Toyota Group companies made an extraordinary decision that they will not demand any pay raise in this year's spring struggle.

Reduced to supplementing corporate production activity

The federation in last autumn's annual convention put forward a policy for their trade union movement in the future. It was a proposal to rethink the conventional policy of an across-the-board call for quantitative enlargement including the improvement of wages and other fundamental working conditions. For trade unions to refrain from demanding quantitative enlargement means that they will not demand wage increases.

What will trade unions do if they are not to call for pay raises and other improvements in working conditions?

The adopted policy says that unions will respond to essential tasks inherent in workshops and in the kinds of jobs and improve the quality of work, so that workers' motivation for working will be elevated.

As to unions' activity in workshops, it calls on union branches and workshops to settle problems on their own and make more active proposals to the management concerning the effects of the corporate policy and on how to respond to globalization.

This resembles the Quality Circle (QC) Movement (driving workers into competition over achieving a set target of producing high quality products with less time) and the Zero Defect (ZD) Movement (driving workers into more intense work supposedly of their own choice by making workers watch for other workers' defects. These systems were established in the 1960s following the U.S. model of labor control, the substance of which was based on exploitation and suppression of rights. The Toyota union federation proposes that unions will take over from companies similar kinds of control activity by small groups. This means that trade unions will turn into a supplement to the production activity of corporations.

It is only right that Toyota workers ask, "For whose benefit does a trade union exist, the company or the workers?"

The Toyota trade unions which made efforts to make the pie bigger have now given up their demands for wage increases. Many trade unions on a similar track of conformism to corporations have found it difficult to accept this concession.

The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) in its meeting on February 7 declaring the 2003 spring struggle openly criticized management for adhering to the reduction of personnel costs to increase competitiveness and calling for a freeze on the annual wage increase system and an end to the negotiated spring struggle formula. It adopted a resolution not accepting this attitude of management, with determination to resolutely fight against it.

Some trade unions affiliated with Rengo are carrying out their struggle in opposition to the Rengo policy of a freeze on the annual wage increase system. The call of financial circles and large corporations for a freeze on the annual wage increase system has been causing a new rift among trade unions based on corporate conformism. (end)