The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) to abandon making unified pay raise demands in future spring joint labor negotiations

In a report on this year's spring joint labor negotiations ("shunto"),
Rengo commented that unions generally failed to make any incremental
improvements to labor conditions such as wages. The reasons were that,
in the present context of the employment environment reaching a critical
point and sharply deteriorating corporate business performance,
(1) many organizations were forced to make job security their primary
goal, and (2) the negotiations focused on international competitiveness
and labor costs and on how they should be identified.

Rengo therefore concluded that traditional tactics will no longer
work in future shunto negotiations, and proposed the adoption, after
further discussions, of a basic policy of not establishing a unified demand standard that shows the requested wage hike range. From here on,
industrial unions will determine the demand standard for wage hikes,
with Rengo shifting its focus to establishing "minimum movement tasks"
which all member unions are required to tackle. These tasks include
maintaining the wage curve and the establishment of an agreement on
intra-firm minimum wages that would apply to all employees. This new
proposal is planned to be officially decided at the Central Committee
meeting in October after a round of organizational discussions.

Many labor unions, mostly major metal workers' unions, have long
insisted that wage hikes are something the industrial unions should
decide independently, and that Rengo should deal with social security
and other measures that place more emphasis on policy system tasks
that industrial unions cannot carry out. On the other hand, many
labor unions and regional organizations whose members comprise
numerous small- to- medium-sized enterprises and local industries
demand that Rengo demonstrate leadership in creating wage standards
and criteria.

The JIL Labor Flash has noted in past issues that this year's
shunto was likely to be an unprecedented and epoch-making labor
negotiation event. For the moment, however, nobody knows if this
shift in strategic policy will help to boost Rengo's attraction
or weaken it.