Reuters, Tokyo, January 19 —Japan’s largest business lobby group ignored it on Tuesday, demanding a raise because it was preparing for key spring wage negotiations with the union, calling the package increase “unrealistic” because the company was The impact of COVID-19 officials said the pandemic.
Keidanren announced the guidelines for upcoming wage negotiations that will end in mid-March, and emphasized that given the current economic and health crisis, the focus is on protecting jobs, not raising wages.
The cautious attitude of the business lobby shows that after the union led by Rengo last year proposed the lowest minimum wage in seven years, there were difficult negotiations with the union led by Rengo, which called for a uniform increase of the basic wage by 2%.
Until last year, as the government put pressure on companies to raise wages to overcome deflation and stagnation, large companies have raised wages by more than 2% each spring for six consecutive years, and deflation and stagnation have plagued the Japanese government. Up to 20 years.
Leaders such as Toyota Motor Corp. set the tone for the annual spring labor negotiations, and others are different.
However, in recent years, Japanese companies have begun to adopt more diversified salary methods. In order to avoid attracting young skilled workers, they have avoided full-scale salary increases and switched to performance-based wages instead of seniority-based wages.
The wage strategy is also affected by changes in the structure of the Japanese labor market. About 40% of workers are low-paid part-time employees and contract workers, which is twice the ratio before the 1990 Japanese bubble burst.
An increasing number of low-paid workers tend to lead unions to prioritize work safety and resolve the income gap between long-term employees and other employees, rather than substantially increasing wages. (Reporting by Izumi Nakagawa and Tetsushi Kato; Editing by Huang Biyu)
Post time: Jan-19-2021