Break through economic crisis by successful 2010 Spring Labor Offensive

Japan Press Weekly

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

Break through economic crisis by successful 2010 Spring Labor Offensive - Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The 2010 Spring Labor Offensive has begun.

Aggravated living conditions of workers and the public at large caused by the government’s “restructuring” policy as well as by major corporations’ arbitrary management policies are triggering a vicious cycle of an increased fall in consumption aggravating a further economic crisis.

Workers and the public are facing drastic increases in the use of contingency workers and the numbers of jobless; reduced annual income (a 420,000 yen drop from 10 years’ ago); longer working hours and ‘karoshi’ (death from overwork), worsened mental health, deteriorating local economies, sharp increases in the number of families on relief and with zero savings; more than 30,000 suicides for 12 consecutive years; and a further declining birthrate.

The new government led by the Democratic Party has failed to effectively deal with these urgent matters.

This requires workers in the 2010 Spring Labor Offensive to call on corporations to raise wages that will sustain their living conditions. Also, they must urge the new government to enact a law for a drastic increase in minimum wages; implement drastic employment measures; completely revise the Worker Dispatch Law; encourage smaller businesses; and improve medical, pension, and social welfare services.

Now that the government is so reluctant to force major corporations to fulfill their social responsibilities, Japan’s labor movement, specifically in the Spring Labor Offensive, is expected to give a boost to efforts to address these urgent issues.

Business circles and major firms are insisting that the annual wage hike should be frozen this year because of an economic quagmire. Unions of major corporations following labor-capital collaborationism are shelving their demands for a wage hike.

However, we must note that major corporations in the past ten years have increased their internal reserves from 209.9 trillion yen to 428.6 trillion yen, a sharp increase of 218.7 trillion yen.

The Japan Research Institute of Labour Movement (Rodo-Soken), a non-government think-tank, in its analysis states:

“If their additional internal reserves of 218.7 trillion yen is redistributed to the workers and the public through the channels of wage hikes, shorter working hours, employment of contingents as regular workers, and increase in the corporate tax rate up to the former level, it would increase domestic demands by 263 trillion yen, adding 424.7 trillion yen to Japan’s Gross Domestic Product as well as a 41.1 trillion yen tax increase.”

Isn’t this the best way in the public interest to ensure a sound rehabilitation of Japan’s economy and people’s living conditions? Unless Japan ends depending on foreign demands that do not work, it cannot have sustainable economic development.

Japan’s labor movements have positively taken on political tasks to defend peace and democracy.

The Spring Labor Offensive is expected to make 2010 a year that will realize “an Okinawa and Japan without U.S. military bases” by facilitating a campaign to widely ask the public about the correctness of the decades-long Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. Also, it must join to hamper attempts to destroy parliamentary democracy by reforming Diet laws and attempts to cut the House of Representatives proportional representation seats by 80.

The Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) and other class-conscious trade unions have been successfully involved in the struggles against poverty and social disparity, and have won great public support.

Let’s make the Spring Labor Offensive in 2010 a step to achieve a further development of Japan’s labor union movement as a base of an in-depth unity of the general public, by firmly linking the economic and political struggles!

- Akahata, January 13, 2010