Public turns their attention to Zenroren

Japan Press Weekly

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Public turns their attention to Zenroren

--An interview with new Zenroren President Daikoku Sakuji

In an Akahata interview on September 10, the National Confederation of Trade Unions’ (Zenroren) President Daikoku Sakuji talked about the immediate tasks and goals of the Zenroren movement, which will mark its 20^th anniversary next year.

Daikoku Sakuji was elected as Zenroren president at its 23rd Regular Convention held in July.

Akahata: How do you see the present situation as the new president of Zenroren?

Daikoku Sakuji: A major change is taking place and influencing the direction of the Japanese political situation, and what Zenroren has been advocating is being shared by the broad public, including the eradication of the working poor, raising the minimum wage, the need to organize part-time, temporary and other contingent workers, and opposition to adverse revision of social services and protecting the Constitution. The present situation makes us realize that it’s time for Zenroren to increase its part. I brace myself to challenge the tasks that confront us.

How I started my involvement in the labor movement

Akahata: When did you first participate in the labor movement?

Daikoku: I am from a poor family of seven that lived in a tiny two-room house. After graduating from senior high school, I began to work as a part-timer at the garbage collection department of Nagoya City. I also went to the evening undergraduate course of Nihon Fukushi University. In 1971, I became a Nagoya City employee and then I was elected to the executive committee of Nagoya City Workers’ Union Garbage Collection Branch. This was the start of my career.

Our union was involved in the effort to improve garbage collection services. For example, we abolished the practice of receiving tips from residents for sewage disposal as part of the effort to provide services in the interest of residents.

We started up a new project that combined recycling of wastes and employed disabled persons. The city collected recyclable waste including bottles and cans from residents and provided disabled persons with sorting work. This business promoted the recycling of household waste and contributed to increasing disabled persons’ incomes.

We put into practice the concept of “democratic local public service workers” that protect the public sector workers’ living and working conditions while pursuing work that serves the interests of local residents. These efforts in turn gave significant support to the then progressive Nagoya City administration.

At the time, garbage trucks and drivers were from the private sector. So our union, together with the transport workers union (the present Construction, Transport and General Workers Union), waged joint struggles for wage increases, organizational build-up, and an increase in the unit price for sub-contractors.

More over, I worked hard to help union members solve their loan problems. Many union members had difficulty repaying loans from non-bank lending companies. I negotiated with loan companies and even went to court. At one point, I used my own house as security for one union member’s lump-sum repayment, without telling my wife. I helped solve about 180 such cases.

These experiences are the start of my career in the labor movement.

Organizing unorganized workers

Akahata: What is the present main focus of the Zenroren movement?

Daikoku: The main issue facing us today is the struggle to defend the employment and rights of contingent workers. About half of young workers are contingent workers. They cannot have prospects for getting married and raising children. The situation poses a problem that we cannot ignore in relation to future Japanese society. The trade unions’ raison d’etre, which is to guarantee stable employment and decent living, will be tested.

Zenroren has opened the Contingent Workers’ Center to develop the movement among part-time, temporary, and foreign workers and organize them. On October 5, we will hold a large National Youth Rally.

The question of small- and medium-sized businesses, at which an overwhelming majority of workers are employed, is important. In order for them to be able to financially pay full-time workers, we will make efforts to have large corporations fulfill their social responsibility by raising unit costs paid to suppliers and other sub-contractors and guaranteeing prices in contracts for public works by enacting an ordinance on public contracts.

We will work to have the Worker Dispatch Law revised by taking advantage of the current move away from deregulation, a current that has been created by the Zenroren movement as well as by the Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo’s questionings in the Diet calling for stronger regulation.

The Japanese labor movement has been a movement for “full-time workers organized in each company.” It certainly had weaknesses in dealing with problems facing contingent workers and in organizing the unorganized, as well as in the struggle for minimum wage increase and social services. Such struggles were carried out mainly by men.

Today, more and more full-time workers are being replaced by part-time and other contingent workers, creating a legion of the working poor. Social services are breaking down. To overcome this situation, it is time for both full-time and contingent workers, men and women, and public and private-sector workers to rise up and struggle in solidarity in the company as well as in residential areas. Zenroren wants to lead in the struggle.

Break through critical living

Akahata: Defense of the livelihood and business from the soaring fuel and other prices is a focus of the present struggle, isn’t it?

Daikoku: Yes, it is. Farmers, fishermen, and small businesspeople are rising up in various struggles. In the past, they used to lobby the government and ruling parties through concerned business organizations. Today, they opt to influence politics by directly appealing to the public, as seen in a recent fishermen’s strike. This is a dramatic change.

We expressed solidarity with the fishermen’s strike. In Osaka, the Japan Trucking Association called on the Construction and Transport Workers’ Union to join them in united action. We want to help develop united efforts to create a big tide to break through the crisis in falling living standards.

We will take this as a chance to change politics

Akahata: With Prime Minister Fukdua resigning, the House of Representatives is likely to be dissolved for a general election soon.

Daikoku: The Fukuda Cabinet had no choice but to resign because it could not move away from the failing “structural reform” policy of imposing hardships on the public. Giving up following the footsteps of Prime Minister Abe shows the Liberal Democratic Party in a no-way-out situation. We take the possible dissolution of the House of Representatives for a general election as a golden opportunity to change what politics is all about.

There is no future for Japan with a change in prime minister, unless the structural reform policy is ended. We want to do our best to change politics, not in the interests of large corporations but in support of the people’s livelihood, from subservience to the United States but defending peace by giving renewed life to the Constitution - Akahata. September 10, 2008