First Labor Assemblies by Industry of the New Century Come to a Close

Regular assemblies of Rengo-affiliated labor organizations were held between July and September. Over this time, the Japanese labor market took a turn for the worse; major corporate restructuring news were in the papers almost daily. An election for seats in the Upper House was also held, resulting in a landslide victory for the Liberal Democratic Party swept along by Prime Minister Koizumi's reforms and continuing popularity. These developments revealed the decreased political influence of labor organizations. (See previous JIL Labor Flash volumes)
For this reason, the assemblies held by the labor organizations focused primarily on reorganization designed to enable individual labor organizations to better adapt to changes in the market and play a more powerful role within it.

In July, Japan Federation of Commercial Workers' Union, Chain Store Labor Unions Council, and seven department store unions established the Japan Federation of Service and Distributive Workers Unions comprising 180,000 members. Japan Federation of Leisure, Service Industries Workers' Unions, together with the hotel and restaurant branches of the Japanese Federation of Chemical, Service and General Trade Unions (CSG), also established a separate Japan Federation of Service & Tourism Industries Workers' Unions of 50,000 members. The Japanese Federation of Textile, Garment, Chemical, Mercantile, and Allied Industry Workers' Unions (Zensen) (580,000 members) and CSG (200,000 members) also announced that the two organizations will merge next autumn. Zensen has already announced that it and Japan Federation of Commercial Workers' Union have established a special committee for discussing the merger of the two organizations in 2004. If these series of mergers come to pass, it will result in the formation of the largest private sector labor organization in the country, bigger than even the Confederation of Japanese Automobile Workers' Unions or the Japanese Electrical, Electronics & Information Union.

In other fields, the Japanese Federation of Iron and Steel Workers' Unions (145,000 members), the Japan Confederation of Shipbuilding & Engineering Workers' Unions (110,000 members), and the Japanese Metal and Mining Workers' Unions (22,000 members) have unofficially agreed to merge in 2003. (The Japan Confederation of Shipbuilding & Engineering Workers' Unions is expected to officially approve the merger at next year's assembly). Similar developments are taking place in the food and chemical industries.

In addition to this degree of labor realignment and reorganization, labor organizations have also begun to review the basis of their Shunto demands and have awoken to the need to reach a better social consensus. The Japanese Electrical, Electronics & Information Union (Denki Rengo), for example, in an effort to disassociate itself from traditional seniority systems, removed "schooling" and "years of employment" from the calculations that it uses to arrive at figures for worker wages that it submits during Shunto labor negotiations.

The Japan Council of Metal Workers' Unions (2,250,000 members) also stressed at its general assembly that it will seek to shift its emphasis from a profit-sharing model built upon an economic growth paradigm to a social consensus model that emphasizes employer-employee agreement. It also suggested the full-scale implementation of work-sharing models.