Japan Press Weekly

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2014 April 9 - 15 [LABOR]

Japan’s dockworkers win minimum wage increase after engaging in strikes

As a result of a series of strikes, Japan’s dockworkers have won an increase in their industry’s minimum wages.

In a collective bargaining session on April 10, the National Federation of Dockworkers’ Unions of Japan (Zenkoku-kowan) and the Japan Harbor Transportation Association UJHTA) which organizes harbor transport companies in Japan reached an agreement to increase dockworkers’ monthly minimum wage by 2,400 yen to 160,000 yen and the daily minimum wage to 6,960 yen from the current 6,310 yen. The association also promised to get cargo owners such as big corporations to assure their contractors proper payment.

The minimum standard of working conditions for dockworkers in Japan is determined through annual spring negotiations between Zenkoku-kowan and the JHTA.

In this annual spring wage struggle, the union had entered into a dispute with the employers’ organization over an increase in the minimum wage. During labor-management talks, the JHTA suddenly began to claim that some working conditions should be negotiated with each individual company and that the current labor-management dialogue system for setting dockworkers’ minimum wages should be eliminated.

In protest against the JHTA’s response, Zenkoku-kowan decided to take industrial actions. The union waged a 24-hour strike at all docks across the nation three times. It also threatened the JHTA with a strategy of nationwide strikes on every Sunday and refusal of overtime after 6 p.m. in case their wage hike demand was turned down.

Zenkoku-kowan President Itoya Kinichiro said that while the government’s pay-raise request did not work in his industry, the union won the pay raise through union workers’ unified efforts.

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On the same day, the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) and the People’s Spring Struggle Joint Committee waged a day of action calling for a drastic wage increase and cancellation of the planned mal-revision of the law on the use of temporary workers.

About 1,000 union workers took part in a rally in front of the Labor Ministry building, a petition to Dietmembers, and a “lunch break” demonstration.

At the rally in front of the Labor Ministry building, a representative of the National Federation of Consumers’ Cooperatives Workers’ Unions, which mainly organizes non-regular workers, said that the need now is to realize an across-the-board increase to 1,000 yen or more per hour in the minimum wage and establish the principle of equal treatment in workplaces.

Past related article:
> Japan’s postal workers walk out to seek pay increase [March 21 & 24, 2014]