Japanese workers movement reached today?
Yokoyama Yoshio. It is now nearly two years since the united union in the private sector, Zenmin Rokyo, was set
• During these two years the reorganisation of the unions in this sector has been extremely rapid. There was resistance to this policy of unification because its effect was to weaken the unions. But within a year this resistance was defeated The battles were concentrated in the main Sohyo unions in the private sector; the railway and the engineering union. Once this resistance was broken, a general tendency toward fusion and a drift to the right became inevitable.
To understand the relative ease with which Zenmin Ryoko was formed and consolidated you have to take several in militancy has developed due to the fact that the traditional forms of struggle and the functioning of Sohyo have lost all effectiveness.
In a period of rapid economic growth these methods used to be able to ensure wage rises. They are now shown to be incapable of standing up to the programme of capitalist rationalisation that came in with the international recession. The traditional spring offensives (Shunto) on wage agreements have achieved little for the unions in the last ten years.
More generally, the base of the unions is made up of permanent workers in large enterprises and service industries, who represent a minority of the working class.
The unions have not seriously tried to organise new layers of workers such as temporary workers, workers in the smalland medium-sized firms, etc. Nor have they responded to the new problems posed by the economic crisis, that of older workers or of the consequences of technological innovation, robots and office automation.
Among the small- and medium-sized enterprises, 1,800 to 1,900 closures are being announced every month. In a certain number of cases the workers have been able to resist rationalisation and
But this is only in exceptional circumstances. The majority of workers, because of the lack of tradition and organisation in this sector, have not been able to mount a serious fightback, even when their firms faced bankruptcy.
Only 20 per cent of women who work are unionised. Yet they represent a large proportion of part-time workers, and this sector is growing rapidly.
employers are singling out older workers for attack [see previous article ]. Furthermore, the introduc tion of new technology, extending now into office work, has played a big role in the international competetiveness of Japanese firms and the disruption of
The unions have not yet responded to such burning issues and the new types of contradictions posed. They only affect a minority of organised workers, who represent 30 per cent of the total. The unions, moreover, face huge financial problems, and the fusions have permitted a certain internal rationalisation with, for example, a reduction in the number of union fulltimers.
The trade-union movement has also been affected by developments in the political parties. It is especially impor tant to underline here the impact of the sharp turn by the Socialist Party, which is very directly linked to Sohyo. One of
the issues around which Sohyo played a progressive role, in the recent period, was the mobilisation against militarism and war. Sohyo helped to consolid-te the desire for peace among the Japanese people. The SP played a leading role in Sohyo in this area. But recently it took a major turn to the right.
Essentially, the SP wants to enter a coalition government with the Democratic Socialist Party and the Komei (1) and without the Communist Party. So, to achieve this, it is trimming its policies to suit the right-wing parties. As a result, the political axis around which workers could be mobilised anti-war movement is now weakened.
Q. And what is happening
A. Following the formation Zenmin Rokyo in December 1982, the workers movement in the public sector is now the focus of the reorganisation pro-
Sohyo also has the bulk of its members here, that is, 3 million out of a total of 4.5 million in the confederation.
Three unions in particular have been targets of the offensive by the government and the bourgeois press: the National Railway Workers' Union (Kokuro), the Local Government Workers' Union (Jichiro) and the National Education
On the railways the attack was made in the name of reducing the financial losses on the service. government was seeking to rationalise, denationalise and dismantle this sector.
municipalities, under the banner of 'administrative form' - that is, cutting salaries and degrading work conditions - the government got the media to whip up publie opinion against 'ineffecient' civil servants. And they are doing the same with teachers and workers in education, the dissatisfaction of many parents with the exam system, etc. to them. attacks by the government have had an
All sectors of the economy are effect-
The public sector is under violent attack. In the large firms the system of employment for life for permanent workers and of pay rises based on seniority is being progressively eroded.
and medium-sized companies are most directly hit by this.
the Second World War, big changes in industrial and foreign policy by the regime (as in the 1960s) have always provoked huge workers struggles. Today, for the first time, similar economic and political upheavals have occured without any popular response. because of the wrong policies and the passivity of the Sohyo leadership.
In the wake of this paralysis of Sohyo, the government is systematically discussing rationalisation and work reorganisation with right-wing trade-union
Basically, they are hoping to consolidate a new 'sphere of joint prosperity' in the Asian Pacific region or, more precisely, an integrated regional economy dominated by Japan.
They envisage an active role for the unions in line with this project, in helping to ensure the competitiveness of Japanese firms in the trade war with the West. This has been accepted in principle by the leadership of Zenmin Rokyo and the left have been unable to mobilise mass opposition to such a perspective.
As for the rightward fusion of the unions, a committee will be set up in 1985 for unification in the publie sector, and by 1987 the overall fusion of the public and private sectors should have been achieved.
Q. What is the situation of Rodo Joho and more generally of the left within the trade-union movement?
A. At the time of the formation of Zenmin Rokyo several opposition currents existed within the union:
Rodo Joho, which is composed of the far left, the traditionally combative unions within Sohyo and independent unions, ete. (Toitsu Rosokon) led by the Communist Party. This group in fact has been functioning a long time as an opposition within Sohyo, even though it has only recently been formally constituted.
three ex-leaders of Sohyo launched an appeal for the unification of the left tendencies against the shift to the right by the union leadership and they have formed (Roken) Roken is mostly based among the middle layer of Sohyo activists. supporters hope to be able to draw together about a thousand of them on a regular basis.
Rodo Joho and Roken have set up the National Work Liaison Council Zenkoku Rosoren — which plays an important role in giving a common organisational framework to union militants. But at the moment there are only about people organised within this
Although many workers may look to Rosoren or Roken with varying expectations, it is often difficult to get them to join an organisation led by the left. And this more particularly so when these organisations have not yet defined their objectives very clearly.
It was relatively easy to make a bloc against the policies of Zenmin Rokyo. But it is much more difficult to work out a positive line for joint action. One possibility is to take up the areas of work that the Sohyo leadership abandoned such as the anti-war mobilisations against nuclear missiles, the organisation of the non-unionised, etc.
There is a further difficulty connected with Sohyo's prominence on a national level. Sohyo members will be wary of dual commitments (to Sohyo or Roken and Rosoren) or of changes at the centre of the national union. the processes in motion will be Sohyo disappears into the unified union 'of the right'. Then the left will need to define itself more clearly. Before that I don't think we can expect big changes in the Japanese trade-union movement.
And what is the responsibility of trade unionists and worker militants in relation to the anti-imperialist struggle in
Zenmin Rokyo wants to defend the 'national interest' of Japan, that is, the interests of Japanese capitalism in the region and in relation to international competition. Any left, class-struggle wing must base itself on international solidarity and the fight against imperialism.
Some say that the situation in Japan will only change under the impact of ex-
This was the case in the past with the Mongol invasions and the arrival of American gunboats in the middle of the last century and in the Second World War. In the workers movement itself there are similar examples.
International solidarity and the anti-imperialist movement can play a big role through exchange of experiences and pressure from the outside. to note is the impact of the action of Western trade unionists in exposing the working conditions in Japan, or the political impact of the fight for national liberation in the Philippines and the struggle for democratic rights in South Korea.
The traditional ideology of the workers movement for peace and democracy has lost its central role and must be replaced by new principles of international class solidarity. In order to clarify these principles it is important to understand the link between the peace movement and democracy in Japan (and our conditions of existence here) and the represwhich the peoples of Asia are subjected.
The SP is the main political formation of The CP broke with Moscow at the beginning of the 1960s during the Sino-Soviet split and then with Peking at the time of the cultural revolution (1966-1969). It thus became one of the first, more or less, independent Socialist Party) is an ultra-right split off from
SP, linked to the leadership of the union Government') is a relatively recent formation linked originally to a Buddhist sect.
International Viewpoint 29 October 1984