File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9708, message 100


Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 16:55:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Japanese trade unions at loose ends




Japanese unions, like unions in virtually every capitalist society, are
finding the road to hell is paved with the broken promises of social
democrats.  And Japanese workers, like workers in virtually every industrial
society, are discarding their erstwhile political mentors in droves.
Coupled with declining memberships, this political disarray is having
profound changes in the way in which Japanese trade unionists are conducting
political business.

Since the late 1980s, unions have been attracting fewer younger workers,
while older members are being retired early or scrapped altogether as more
and more companies break the unwritten taboo against firing people to cut
costs.  Those being replaced are being increasingly done so by part-time
workers, who not only cost less to employ, but who are situationally
difficult to organize, as well.

Overall, the unions continued their slow but inexorable decline in 1996,
falling from 12,613,582 to 12,451,149.  The ratio of union members to the
total work force has been falling for more than twenty years, reaching a
record low of 23.2 per cent in 1996.  That figure has dropped fully 10
percentage points in the past two decades.

To make matters worse, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), the
main union umbrella group, is experiencing an internecine struggle among its
member unions over which political party to support.  The Social Democratic
party, which for years could count on the unquestioned support and finances
of the main trade unions and their privileged bureaucracies, is now,
politically, a dead dog.  The Communist Party has all but replaced it as the
main opposition force on the Left, and a number of industrial and service
unions have either opened links with the Communists or are seriously
exploring the possibilities of doing so.

The split with the Social Democrats (formerly the Socialist Party) became
irreversible last spring when the party's political plenum urged unions to
abandon their practise of winning large wages.  Instead, Social Democratic
leaders  urged trade unionists to direct their efforts toward "monitoring
management and securing better wage structures in line with ability and
achievement, rather than seniority".  This proved too much for the overblown
trade union bureacracy which has fattened itself for years on Japan's
paternalistic political-economic system.

Since, for these people, an alliance with the Communists is out of the
question, they have browsed among the new crop of emerging right-of-center
political parties.  Many private-sector unions back the rightist New
Frontier Party, where many conservative socialists ended up at the end of
the Cold War.  Zenkin Rengo, a 330,000-member machinery and metal-trade
union, and Zensen Doumei, which represents more than 600,000 textile,
distribution, food and service workers, have all opted for the New Frontier,
though support for the Communists is growing among the rank in file,
particularly in Tokyo.  There is a growing split between member unions of
the Japan Automobile Workers' Union, as the Left moves toward the
Communists, while the right hankers after the centrist Democratic Party of
Japan.  A number of smaller parties are also vying for the loyalty of the
recently disbanded General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sohyo), which
recently produced a still-born "Conference of Democratic and Liberal
Unions", to combat growing "radical" [Communist Party] influence.  A few
have even approached the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, until recently
anathema to virtually every wing of Japanese labor.

It is instructive, in a way, to watch the maneuverings of trade union
bureaucrats desperate to avoid becoming tainted with the brush of
"Communism".  At a time when slow economic growth has all but vitiated big
pay raises, and the unwritten social contract between worker and employee
has been all but officially junked, there is little that holds the rank and
file union member to the bosses.  And the bugaboo of anti-Communism is
losing its appeal in a society already jaded by years of economic stagnation
and decline.

Louis Godena

*Nikkei Weekly*, August 4, 1997; *Japanese Economic Almanac*, August 1997;
*Asian Trade Union Review*, July-August, 1997. 




                                                                            
      



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