Japanese economy to grow fast and allowed Japanese capitalism, in the subsequent years of economic stagnation, to develop
The workers movement and the capitalist offensive relatively excellent economic performance through their hard work and endurance But the years have long gone since each worker's wish to raise his living standard coincided with the corporate requirement of high productivity. In other words, the situation no longer exists where the
We publish below an article and an interview with Yokoyama Yoshio of the journal Kikan Rodo Undo (a quarterly publication of the workers movement) who is also an activist in Rodo Joho, a class-struggle tendency in the Japanese trade-union movement. He is a leader of the Sohyo union in the oil industry's General Sekiku KK company.
The article originally appeared in the English-language Japanese review
AMPO (vol. 16, Nos 1 and 2, 1984). Here he sets out the current changes in workers' conditions and the crisis of the trade-union movement which ensued. The interview was given in Tokyo at the end of July 1984, and it complements the article, explaining more fully the developments within the workers movement. For several years now a process of fusion of the main unions has been underway, which represents a shift to the right (see IV, No 7, 21 May 1982). The leadership of Sohyo (the General
Council of Unions), which is basically made up of the Socialist Party, is increasingly prepared to accept the plan of capitalist rationalisation being imposed by the government and the bosses.
A partial fusion of unions has already taken place in the private sector with the formation in December 1982, of the Zenmin Rokyo (National
Trade Union Liaison Council in the Private Sector). In the next two years the unification of the unions will be implemented in the public sector and at the national level.
YOKOYAMA Yoshio
Some fifteen years ago, the overriding concern of Japanese business corpwas how they could handle
The rapid economic growth period in the 1960s caused a keen young labor force, and employers had to deal with them careas a precious source of profits.
"Golden eggs" (probably meaning goldenhow junior high graduates joining the industry were
Society as a whole was dynamically developing, people were quite active, by taking part in political and social struggles on the issues such as the Vietnam War, the reversion of [the American base in] Okinawa and environmental pollution. Radical campus struggles spread all over the country. The challenge for corporate management was how the workplace could be kept in quarantine from this radical influence and how young workers could be brainwashed by corporate ideology and turned into collaborators of productivity campaigns.
By now young workers are no longer a corporate manager's headache. In the past decade, a new generation of youngsters has been arriving, taking the place of the "angry young men" of the late
1960s. They are the product of a thorough and systematic imposition of capacity and achievement-oriented control of highschool and college students, a system that spurs competition and keeps them
The split of the New Left forces and their failure to produce viable political lines made young people weary of politics while many of the steadfast young radicals in the workplace were purged by corporate management. the late 1960s revolt of the young was brought to an end.
While management are not so much worried about young people, they are about aged workers. Corporate labor control measures are now being shifted more and more to the 40-50 age group who are taking the brunt of all the contradictions of Japanese capitalism generated in the wake of its stall in the first oil crunch period.
Not that aged workers have risen up in rebellion, nor have they their threat to corporate systems is only potential. But sensing the danger of their someday becoming "angry old men," management are taking preemptive meas-
Workers of more than 50 years of age are invited to join special programs that they can accept retirement with psychological preparedness. Usually, the participants attend a short course of two or three days, with orientation sessions on the art of spiritual enrichment, on life-style, the cost of living and pension systems. "preparatory" courses have been devised as a shock therapy, according to their designers.
say that aged workers, hard-working all their life and dependent upon the company psychologically, would otherwise avoid thinking about their postretirement life and when the retirement time comes might be shocked and dis-
The courses, they claim, are meant to present the pre-retirement workers with the stern reality of the life individual worker's wage can rise and his intra-firm position go up as his company expands limitlessly. After the Japanese economy entered a low growth orbit, big companies concentrated on the so-
"body-slimming" rationalization targeted against aged workers arbitrarily and freely transferred to new jobs or else eked out of their original firms to take up odd jobs in sub-
The rationalization drives in the past decade hit the workers so suddenly and violently that they had no time to think and translate disappointment into organized counter-attack against the corporate system. Over so many years they had been collaborwith management in productivity would be rewarded, but the reward given was very different from imagined. Especially in shipbuilding and other heavy industrial sectors, the "bodytook the most drastic forms. Mass dismissals hypocritically called "voluntary retirement" were rampantly carried out. In company towns where major factories operate, told to leave and work, for example, for poulterers, tailors, or even funeral agencies in the towns. By imposing old workers on these dependent small business, the big corporations in fact got rid of their "fat" and thus could tide over the A bosses' system
The current phase follows this surgical now setting out to apply a mid-and long term countermeasures to handle the prob Japanese corporations and government offices is still that of the seniority wage. While big enterprises are recently trying to modify this age-linked wage escalation system by introduction of joblinked and capacity-oriented factors, they have not totally altered the basics of this peculiar wage system under which an old worker of 60 years is paid four or five times the initial pay of fresh recruits (who are paid 120,000 yen or so). This is a wage system very convenient to management since the company can give a certain annual wage increase to individual workers without increasing the firm's total wage cost (because high-paid aged workers are retiring every year to be re-
International Viewpoint 29 October 1984
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JAPAN
by low-paid new recruits). under this system, the retiring workers are paid a severance allowance equivalent to approximately 50 times their monthly
This serves to effectively bind the workers to the enterprise workers and government employees were able to design their lifecycle pattern up to retirement.
wage system coupled with the employment practice served to enlist workers' loyalty to the enter-
But this wage system, especially the into a burden for big corporations now of economic prosperity is gone and the age composition of Japanese society is changing. Already, the average age expectancy of the Japanese
75.1 years for males and 80.4 years for females, the second highest coming century, persons eligible for pensions over the age of 65 years are expected to reach 17.4 per cent of the total population. It should, of course, be noted that the government and big are deliberately exaggerating the problems of the aging of society to justify tax increase but, even so, there is no denying that the actual demographic situation is such as compels workers to think more seriously about their postretirement livelihood.
In the logic of big business, this situation requires special precautionary measures. Big companies are afraid that the more the workers have to worry about their post-retirement life, the less they would lead to lower work morale. Thus, in some companies, workers are told to leave before their regular retirement age. The company says that since old workers have to pick up other, lower paid jobs after retirement anyway, it would be beneficial for them to quit while they still have competitive work capacity, move to other firms, and start their second life earlier. This would of course help economize on the company's severance pay
The retirement preparation program is thus purported to persuade the aged workers to work hard and with high morale if they choose to stay until retirement, or to leave earlier to help abate the firm's wage costs.
The union of Toshiba Co. (a leading electrical firm) offers a legal counselling service for its members. The most frequent cases being handled in the service are divorce. After divorce, they deal with troubles pertaining to usurious consumers' Consumers' credit trouble is not confined
Statistics show that one out usurers who demand exhorbitant inter-
Loans of all kinds choke the necks of aged workers for they started their working life on the assumption that economic prosperity would last for ever. Big companies provide low-interest housamount of 10 million or 15 million yen. International Viewpoint 29 October 1984
But a house costs a minimum of 25 million yen even if it is located in a distant suburb — a two hour commute each way. The differential has to be met by borrowing from other sources. drew housing loans assuming their wage would rise 10 per cent annually, but as the wage growth has been far lower in years, many spend a quarter of their monthly income on loan repay-
In the meantime, a working family has to spend approximately 10 education until their graduates from college. the working family manages to meet this expenditure with the fringe income brought in by the wife. There thus many workers going to sarakin
Others go to sarakin for cash for gambling and nightlife amusements, room and flourish as major city banks that have substantial surplus liquidity because of low equipment investment are willing to lend lavishly to them. Sarakin make available, without mortgage, small lots of money (200,000 - 500,000 yen) and take 70 - 100 percent interest per annum. Money borrowed for amusement is often difficult to repay, and quickly the debts snowball. The victim borrows from another sarakin to return to the original lender, and the borrower soon finds himself in enormous debt - five million or ten million is not rare. is reported in the press almost every day, frequently leads to the collapse of families in tragic ways - suicides, divorce Workers in debt
In fact divorce is often linked to debts. (Even sham divorces to separate the husband's sarakin debts from the wife are
In other cases of divorce, wives who first go to work part-time to complement the small income of their husbands begin to seek independence and then divorce. In such cases, the husband, a company man body and soul, doesn't understand a word when one day his wife declares she is leaving.
Inside the company, computerization is carried out at a rapid pace involving both factories and offices. tion of productive robots and office automation creates a labor surplus, and aged workers are the first victims of this process. They are given desks by the side of the window and given no signif
They are treated as pletives" scornfully called the "windowside tribe" or "landings tribe."
The situation is worse for aged workers in medium and small enterprises who are paid 30 per cent less wages than their big enterprise counter-parts. firms frequently go bankrupt, they are more likely to lose their jobs and generally their livelihood is than big firm employees. big enterprise workers have seen a sharper decline in their living standards in recent years than small enterprise Among other things, most of the small enterprise workers are not unionized
Last year, the rate of organization of Japanese workers went below the 30 per cent level. This had been long predicted; yet when it came, people realized anew the gravity of the situation.
It is noted that 70 per cent of the workers in large companies are organized while only 20 percent of small firm employees are unionized. indicates that the Japanese trade union movement reflects the interests of but a small, special sector of labor.
The declining rate of unionization resulted partly from the structural shift of the labor force from big corporations and government offices to the small business sector but mainly from the loss of popularity and dynamism of the existing union movement.
This year's spring labor campaign was wound up after obtaining a wage increase of 5 percent as against 7 per cent de-
Protest at Narita airport (DR)
manded by the General Council of Trade
Unions (Sohyo).
The newly founded
National Liaison Council of Private Sector Trade Unions (Zenmin Rokyo) deched..
manded a 6 per cent wage increase as its constituent Federation of Steel Workers' Unions, echoing steel capital's inclinaunions at the tion, insisted that wage increase demands be modest.
The wage increase should given was exactly the same as obtained in interests of the
Thus, the spring campaign of last year, but the for safe
Employers' Association of Japan (Nik-
Doro issued a keiren) declared that the wage raise rate was too high as it was above the productivity increase rate. The Sohyo Chairman officially regretted that the unions had been unable to win more, but Nikkeiren's statement was politically worded.
Last year, Nikkeiren declared, after the spring campaign, that business was quite satthe "collaboration of union isfied by leaders"
in keeping the wage increase
This declaration of capital's rate low.
victory embarassed the union leadership, who protested against Nikkeiren over the
Government's
Considering this, offensive the wording.
against careless
Nikkeiren this year saved labor's face by fact,
The average expressing dissatisfaction.
In
Japanese labor's annual spring offenisve experienced defeats consecutively has now for 10 years, the actual wage infuture.
crease rate always remaining lower than even the business-set wage increase cell-
Sohyo first emphasized the numings.
ber of consecutive defeats in order to encourage workers to fight back next their pension time, but recently has stopped enumeration realizing that it would spread only a sense of defeat.
a pioneer union, the steel young workers.
comprising
Formerly, for instance, would win a certain union wage increase rate first, which then was
The "stanemulated by other unions.
dard"
rate won by the pioneer union thus used to be considered as the minimum level of wage increase and, actually, many unions, including small firm unions, did obtain by militant struggles even largment.
er gains than the pioneer unions or their parent firm unions had achieved. But in
Unions in crisis recent years, emulation has become almost impossible as the small, subsidiary
Kokuro being one of the three pillars or subcontract firms threaten their worknaturally
Sohyo, its of timid posture ers saying that if they were to give highweakens the whole of the Sohyo moveer wage increases than the parent firms,
Sohyo thus failed to play its due the latter would refuse to give jobs to ment.
role as the driving force of the spring them. In other cases, it is the parent firm campaign this year.
union that puts pressure on subcontract
Another main pillar of Sohyo, the firm unions not to demand too great an
Union
Government
Workers
Local increase.
(Jochiro) is also under fire as another
It is almost symbolic that in the past major target of the administrative reform three years there has been no strike by
The Sankei Shimbun, a daily transport workers. Railway strikes were program.
paper acting as the mouthpiece of big the most visible and in fact symbolic business, is carrying on a sustained press action characterizing the spring campaign, campaign in favor of administrative reand their absence had demoralizing efform under the slogan, "Let us press entire labor [force] the tects upon eroding workers' confidence in their own down the extremely high salaries of publice workers."
In target areas, Sankei is power.
distributing free copies to local commun-
In the meantime, the Nakasone Cabities and printing special issues, agitating inet's so-called administrative reform prolocal people to fight for public workers' against the public gram is spearheaded
This tactic of antagonizing workers, the hard core of Sohyo. The nawage cuts.
local communities to Jichiro unions has are the central tional railways workers been successfully applied in Musashino the anti-public worker drive.
of target
Using deficits of the National Railways
City in Tokyo, where an agitative cam-
24 the rate
Realizing unorganized ably floor grievances, etc.
own.
omi-
If they had had
Kumiai, or
Its style of
Sim-
Though a similar unimaginwith health, firm weak
But
the main current of trade unionism, and this type of "realism," the union movenow gathered under Zenmin Rokyo are building up their numerical strength. When this is the image kumiai projects, the vast masses of workers with all their real and serious grievances are turned off and even scared by kumiai.
In the current process of labor reorganization, this type of unionism is contaminating even the once militant public workers' unions. The Postal Workers' Union (Zentei) for years was recognized by the public as a "labor rights zealot" for its militant struggles on behalf of the rights of its members. Its work slowdown tactic often caused huge stockpiles of undelivered mails. But this union in the past couple of years has changed its policy drastically in favor of collaborament will never be able to make itself a movement of the working masses them-
But there is the other side of this same
With the changing composition of the labor force, the time is coming when big business corporations' grip on labor is being weakened. In the public sector where the union leadership abruptly switched to the line of "defending the competitiveness of public corporations, rank-and-file workers are beginning to to each other that something should be done to rectify the renegade line. Totally ignored are the most serious grievances of 35 million medium and small business workers and part-time workers. The only way to revive a trade-union movement in Japan is listen to their voices, raise their complaints to articulate demands, and organize them into a new union movement addressing the felt needs of these workers.
We should not be sitting idly leaving the military and parcel forwarders to organize workers in [such a] plight. We should not allow management to freely design the future fate of retiring workers. We must intervene in all these processes and out of them create a vigorous movement of Japanese workers themselves.
tionism. The Postal Ministry, facing competition [from] the fast-growing private parcel services, came out with The recomposition of the work intensification and rationalization plans, and the union has accepted them workers movement one after another. Rank-and-file postal workers are losing their trust in the union: the Zentei organization has ceased to grow and the union finances are becoming tight. Zentei was fighting for many years against the splinter collaborationist union (Zenyusei), but now
Zentei is forced to talk with its adversary for organizational unification simply to maintain itself. The worker unity on the shopfloor has been seriously undermined. Private parcel service firms exploit this situation. When they hear about some Zentei worker suffering from sarakin loans, the private agency immediately approaches him offering to settle all his debts on his behalf and invites him to join. The private parcel service needs expert delivery men. The Self-Defense Forces also are keen on recruiting soldiers from among sarakin victim postal workers in order to fill in their always thin ranks. For this purpose, SDF offers special sarakin counselling service for postal workers, staffing it with expert lawyers.
Probably, the Japanese trade-union movement is in a period of historical ebb. While the regime and big business are able to meet the changing requirements of the times with such new slogans as "an era of low economic growth" and "countermeasures for an aging society," neither has the trade-union movement nor the Socialist Party been able to map out their desired future alternative for society. The failure to do so leads them straight to capitulation to the existing reality. By accepting what exists - strong armed forces despite the constitutional ban, presence in the Japanese territory of US nuclear warheads in spite of non-nuclear pledges, the military alliance with the United States despite the growing danger of war it implies, and ultimately the fact that the union movement is miserably weak, do the main current big unions justify what they do (or do not do). All this "realism" is ostensibly for their survival, and if this easy way may help for some time, it will soon totally undermine their position. As the current reorganization of labor is motivated by International Viewpoint 29 October 1984
Question. The right-wing fusion of unions in the private sector has now been carried through. It is also underway in the public sector. The class-struggle current around the journal Rodo Joho (Workers Information), fought against this fusion because it went hand in hand with the Sohyo bureaucracy lining up behind a policy of capitalist rationalisation of businesses and services. What stage has the