October 18, 2015
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2015 October 14 - 20 [LABOR]
Young people call for minimum hourly wages of at least 1,500 yen |
They chanted to a rap rhythm, “We want 1,500 yen! Support small businesses! We want decent jobs! No more tax increases!”
A 26-year-old man, an AEQUITAS member, said, “Non-regular employment and black corporations have been increasing, and life has become so stressful that I can no longer tolerate this situation.”
A 19-year-old university freshman said, “The average minimum hourly wages is 798 yen at present. Full-time work doesn’t even pay two million yen a year at this rate. One cannot survive on that amount.”
A 20-year-old sophomore in college who works part-time in a welfare facility for 800 yen an hour said in anger, “It is the government policy of cutting social welfare services and not any raise in minimum wages that causes suffering to small business owners.”
* * *
The total amount of dividends companies paid to stockholders in fiscal 2014 increased by 2.32 trillion yen or 47.8% from two years ago, revealing that the increase in profits large corporations made were not returned to ordinary workers.
Based on security reports for fiscal 2012 and 2014, Akahata checked out 830 business entities which made a profit of more than five billion yen in FY 2014.
According to the Akahata calculation, the amount of dividends went up by 67.2% for overseas investors, by 42.7% for domestic firms, and by 30.4% for private investors in Japan. In short, those who pocketed the most from the Abenomics economic policy were foreign speculators. Their investments do not support the Japanese economy because these people mostly look for short-run profit margins.
Past related articles:
> Large corporations’ internal reserves hit record high under ‘Abenomics’ [September 3 and 4, 2015]
> Compensation increase for top 500 corporate execs is 23.7 times more than wage increases for regular employees [July 18, 2015]
> Zenroren in global ‘Fight for $15’ action calls for drastic increase in Japan’s minimum wage [April 16, 2015]
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