Japan Press Weekly

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2013 January 23 - 29 [LABOR]

Zenroren fires up 2013 spring wage struggle

The National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) and the 2013 People’s Spring Struggle Joint Committee have kicked off this year’s wage struggle with the aim at obtaining a wage hike in order to overcome the deflation.

During the lunch hour on January 22, union members of Zenroren and the joint committee marched in demonstration through Tokyo’s Marunouchi business district to the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) building, shouting, “Let’s beat the recession with a wage hike and job growth!”, “Let’s achieve a minimum hourly wage of 1,000 yen or more!”

At a rally held in front of the Keidanren building, Zenreon President Daikoku Sakuji pointed out that the main reason for a slow economic recovery is that workers’ wages have decreased by 12% in the past 15 years while corporations have increased their profits by 163% during the same period of time.

“We have to make aggressive efforts to win a pay raise which is fundamental to overcoming the deflationary recession,” Daikoku stressed.

All Japan Construction, Transport and General Workers’ Union (Kenkoro) Chair Fujiyoshi Shigeyasu in his speech said, “Unless the government establishes a system to secure stable income for workers, the use of an enormous amount of tax money for public investment will be useless to pump up the Japanese economy overall.”

Keidanren on the previous day issued a strategy for the spring wage struggle, showing its intent to further reduce labor costs.