Japan Press Weekly

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2008 October 29 - November 4 [LABOR]

People’s Spring Struggle Joint Committee holds meeting to discuss 2009 struggle

Japan’s progressive trade unions participating in the People’s Spring Struggle Joint Committee held their annual meeting on October 29 in Tokyo to discuss the general direction of the next year’s Spring Struggle for pay raises and improvements in working conditions. The slogan is “We will develop a major united effort to eliminate poverty and defend living standards in an effort to overturn the pro-big business society.”

The Joint Committee consists of the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) and trade unions that are not affiliated with any national trade union center.

Zenroren President Daikoku Sakuji gave the opening speech on behalf of the Committee. He pointed out that unions with the Joint Committee will wage the 2009 Spring Struggle in the midst of an economic recession and financial crisis. “Our task in the Spring Struggle is to change the economy from one of relying on foreign demand and exports to one of increasing domestic demand and improving living conditions,” he said.

Odagawa Yoshikazu, secretary general of the committee and Zenroren secretary general, proposed a draft of the action program. He emphasized the importance of an effort to prevent the cost of the economic downturn from being shifted onto workers as well as onto small- and medium-sized suppliers. He also said that unions should increase the effort to press the business sector, and large corporations in particular, to fulfill their social responsibilities.

The action program focuses on job security through fundamentally revising the Worker Dispatch Law, shortening working hours, and winning a bottom-up wage increase focusing on an increase in the minimum wage. It also calls for a nationwide joint struggle for job creation and the rebuilding of social services destroyed under the ‘structural reform’ policy.

During the discussion, a participant from the Kanagawa Prefectural Federation of Trade Unions spoke about a meeting they held to exchange views with small- and medium-sized businesses that are suffering from the economic recession and from large corporations’ abuse of power. He said, “We want to solve the crisis through joint struggles encircling large corporations.”