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Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Major manufacturers offer pay raise for the first time in five years

Japan's major manufacturers, including automakers, steel makers, and electronics companies on March 15 simultaneously offered a wage increase to the Japan Council of the Metal Workers' Unions (IMF-JC) affiliates in the 2006 Spring Struggle. The pay raise offer is the first in five years, though the amount remains low.

Autoworkers' unions demanded a wage increase for the first time in four years. Toyota Motor Corp. offered a 1,000 yen a month raise in addition to an annual increase, bringing the total raise to 7,900 yen a month, showing a reluctance to accept the union demand for a basic pay raise for all workers.

In the electronics industry, company unions demanded a 2,000-yen monthly pay raise but won only 500 yen at Hitachi Ltd. and 1,000 yen at Fujitsu.

Steel companies promised a pay increase in response to unions' call for a 3,000 yen monthly wage hike. The specific amounts and timing of the raise will continue to be negotiated.

The IMF-JC's spring offensive task force said that though insufficient, the offers as a whole were positive in the sense that companies have promised a wage increase for the first time in five years.

A Toyota worker in Toyota City in Aichi Prefecture said the offer is "one step forward," and added, "One thousand yen is insufficient."

Given the fact that major corporations have prospered without giving workers any basic wage increases for four years while forcing workers to work under harsh conditions and short changing suppliers, the corporations were urged to fulfill their social responsibility.

For example, Toyota could have given a 10,000 yen monthly wage hike (with a 60,000 yen special bonus) if it uses just 0.5% of the Toyota group's internal reserve amounting to 39 million yen per worker (as of March 2005).

The 2006 Spring Struggle was waged at a time when the Koizumi Cabinet's "structural reform" policy is having adverse effects, including increasing poverty rates and a widening of the social gap.

Both the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) and the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) are calling for an increase in part-timers' wages and hourly wages in the effort to achieve a raise for all workers and help narrow the social gap inorder to help increase personal consumption that will be key to Japan's economic recovery.

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On March 15, the Joint Struggle Committee for Victory in the People's Spring Labor Offensive that includes Zenroren published the first round of wage negotiations results. The industrial average of wage increase offers to the All-Japan Metal and Information Machinery Workers' Union (JMIU) and the All Japan Construction, Transport and General Workers Union (CTG) ranged from 2,200 yen to 6,853 yen, including annual wage hikes.

The 2006 Spring Struggle has entered the stage in which private railway, electronics and other industrial unions, as well as unions at small- and medium-sized companies, and part-timers and other non-regular workers struggle to win hourly wage hikes and better working conditions.
- Akahata, March 16, 2006