Union activists discuss 2022 Spring Struggle for an equitable society in which substantial wage increase from bottom up enabling everyone can work with hope for future

The National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) and the Joint People’s Spring Struggle Committee held an online meeting on November 22-23 to discuss action plans for the upcoming annual labor negotiations known as the Spring Struggle.

At issue is the need to improve the low wages and the insecure employment situation in Japan, which have been laid bare amid the coronavirus pandemic. Prime Minister Kishida Fumio’s government has launched a plan to give essential workers a pay raise. But the proposed raise is so small, the period so short, and the scope of application so limited, that it is not conducive to improvement of wages or working conditions.

The unions are called upon to lead a struggle from the workplace and the local community to win a substantial wage increase and pay raise from the bottom up and achieve a gender-equal society.

The participants discussed action plans for the task of winning the workers’ demands, including opposition to the adverse revision of the Constitution, and plans for increasing union members and for unity of workers in the struggle.

Zenroren President Obata Masako gave the following opening speech:

Opening Speech by Obata Masako at the 2022 Joint People’s Spring Struggle Committee’s Discussion Meeting

Executive director of the Joint People’s Spring Struggle Committee and
President of the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren),
November 22, 2021

Thank you all for participating in this meeting to discuss the 2022 People’s Spring Struggle at a time when the “autumn and year-end campaign” is underway. I’m Obata Masako, the president of Zenroren.
Let me use this opening speech to discuss three points regarding the situation in the run up to the upcoming Spring Struggle.

First, about the result of the recent House of Representative election, which was held as the unions were waging the autumn campaign. The election offered an opportunity for the workers and people in general to call for political change and change of government so that their pressing needs would be met. Zenroren and the Joint People’s Spring Struggle Committee have organized emergency action devoted to saving lives. We collected more than 10,000 “letters to the Prime Minister” and urged the ruling and opposition parties to pledge policies to save lives. We succeeded in having four opposition parties promise to reverse the present government cutbacks on healthcare expenditure and swiftly improve the healthcare and public health systems. This effort led to having the government announce the plan to raise the income of care workers, childcare workers, and nurses, and to improve the after-school program. What we called for minimum wage increase in the “Minimum Wage Action Plan 2024” was formulated in the four opposition parties’ shared policy agenda. In addition, each opposition party called for the need to raise the hourly minimum wage to at least 1,500 yen.

The struggle by opposition parties joining their forces to change government has just started. It is indisputable that the demands our movement raised became an issue in the election and that our movement is having influence on real politics. It is a fact that the opposition parties did not do well in terms of the number of seats they won. But it is also a fact that we now stand at the threshold of a new era in which we will have influence on politics and even create politics. Convinced of what we have achieved, let us move forward to further develop cooperation between the citizens’ movement and opposition parties while pushing for a series of demands?the establishment of a uniform national minimum wage system; minimum wage increase to 1,500 yen an hour; wage increase from the bottom up; improvement and expansion of public services to realize a policy to save lives. Let us tackle these tasks from our autumn and year-end campaign.

Second, regarding the highly charged situation over constitutional change. We must take a hard look at the fact that as the result of the general election, the Liberal Democratic and Komeito parties and their complementary force, Nippon Ishin occupy more than two-thirds of the House of Representatives seats. These parties are set to get the Commission on the Constitution of each chamber of the Diet to begin work on the Constitution soon after the extraordinary session of the Diet opens on December 6. The movement toward adverse revision of the Constitution is set in motion.

Prime Minister Kishida used his news conference on November 10 to state: “I have instructed the LDP to strengthen preparedness for pushing ahead with constitutional revision and call for nationwide discussion while proceeding with energetic debate in the Diet.” The LDP has transformed its “task force on the promotion of constitutional revision” to a “task force on the realization of constitutional revision.” This is how they are firm on revising the Constitution.

We should also note the fact that the government is embarking on the path of major military buildup. It in fact is considering acquiring the capability to attack enemy bases, moving toward transforming the Self-Defense Forces into military forces that will take on missions abroad. It is also aiming to increase Japan’s military expenditure to two percent of its GDP. It’s clear that the government wants to gut the Constitution’s war-renouncing Article 9 and strengthen military integration with the United States as part of the effort to turn Japan into a country that wages war abroad. With China in mind, those forces that advocate constitutional revision repeatedly argue that Japan’s security environment is becoming even more severe and that the country needs to be prepared for an emergency. But the most important thing in this regard is to hold fast to peace diplomacy using Article 9 instead of turning Japan into a country that can wage way abroad. The task now is for us to expose the real aim of gutting Article 9 to develop opposition to the adverse revision of the Constitution in the workplace and the local community.

The action plan we are proposing today for the 2022 People’s Spring Struggle stresses the importance of defending the Constitution. It takes into consideration the situation I have just touched on and emphasizes that we should be determined to go on strike in the event of a real constitutional crisis to prevent the Constitution from being adversely revised. I ask you to deepen today’s discussion regarding the Constitution.

Third, and finally, I want to talk about our preparedness for the 2022 People’s Spring Struggle.

The proposed action plan puts emphasis on the task of winning a substantial wage increase from the bottom up. Everyone knows that in Japan, real wages have been in decline over the past more than 20 years. That’s happening only in Japan. In the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, most Western countries got over an economic crisis by raising workers’ wages in the attempt to expand domestic demand. But Japan is the only country to experience the collapse of employment by unilaterally terminating temporary agency workers’ contracts and impose wage restraint to secure corporate profits. This is how Japan tried to achieve economic recovery. As a result, there was not recovery in people’s purchasing power, and the nation’s economy has been unable to get out of a deflationary spiral.

Even amid the pandemic, wages have been raised in Western countries. By contrast, the average minimum wage increase in Japan last year was just 1 yen.

What was the consequence of declines in real wages? Japan’s GDP per capita has slipped to 23rd place from second 20 years ago in the world ranking. In the pandemic, it is important to demand a wage increase to protect the workers’ livelihoods and revitalize the local economy.

Zenroren and the Joint People’s Spring Struggle Committee in the 2021 Spring Struggle put up the slogan: We will never give up because of the coronavirus pandemic; we demand a substantial pay raise from the bottom up because of the pandemic; each of us must stop thinking that nothing can be done about it and fight together for change.” As a result, the average amount of wage offers grew each time they were reported during the Spring Struggle. This reflects the unions struggling tenaciously. As regards this year’s revision of the national benchmark of the minimum wage, it is very inadequate in the light of the workers’ demand. But we should note that we have won an increase of 28 yen in the Central Minimum Wage Council recommendation, up from just 1 yen last year. This achievement shows we are developing a trend in which we can make a difference by joining forces in the union.

We are making efforts to develop this trend into a real one in the 2022 Spring Struggle. To this end, we propose the slogan: “Let us join forces in the union to win a substantial wage increase from the bottom up to create an equitable society which everyone can hope for.” Tag-of-war is already underway over the wages and an increase from the bottom up. As I said earlier, the government has suggested the need to offer pay increase to care workers, childcare workers, and nurses. But under the “new economic policies” adopted by the Cabinet, care workers and childcare workers would get a raise of only 9,000 yen a month. Pay raise for nurses would be no more than 4,000 yen and that it would be applicable only to medical institutions that play certain roles in treating COVID-19 patients. These essential workers are reacting angrily to the extremely inadequate pay raise offers. We will work to translate the workers’ anger into a union voice.

In this meeting we will explore ways to call on our friends in the workplace and local community to fight together with the union concentrating our attention on March 9 when the major companies make wage offers and taking a concerted action on the following day. I close my speech by asking you to have an in-depth discussion. Thank you.