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.