Major car and electronics makers propose no base wage increase

Most large car, electronics and steel makers on March 17 proposed to the Japan Council of Metalworkers' Unions (IMF-JC) that no base wage increase be given for 2004 and the present wage system be maintained.

The workers had expected that this year's spring struggle would force a stop to the business circles' wage cut drive.

Their trade unions, however, for three years in a row did not demand an annual base wage increase, while the companies made enormous profits through corporate restructuring to cut costs. Nissan Motor Workers' Union, the only exception among auto workers unions called for a 1,000 yen increase and got it.

Business circles, supported by the government policy, have a strategy for dissolving the spring struggle system by which labor and management negotiate every year over wages by replacing it with a "performance" system in which workers have to compete among themselves for the drastically reduced wages and benefits.

Without base wage increase, wages for workers at large corporations will be reduced. A worker of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in his 30s complained that he has lost 500,000 yen in his annual income due to wage cuts two years in a row.

Corporations and their trade unions agreed to have an increase in bonuses without raising base wages. But in Japan's corporate environment, where bonuses are more of a supplement to living expenses than a "prize", increase in bonuses cannot substitute for a base wage increase. (end)