THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
January 22, 2025 at 17:09 JST
Rengo President Tomoko Yoshino, back right, speaks at the "shunto" labor negotiations meeting in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward on Jan. 22. (Koichi Ueda)
With inflation continuing to rise, the focus in this year’s “shunto” spring labor negotiations, which began on Jan. 22, will be on if wages will increase at small and midsize companies to keep pace.
Top labor-management officials from the central labor union organization Rengo (Japanese Trade Union Confederation) and Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) met in Tokyo on the day.
“We must avoid stagnation in the trend of wage increases that have begun over the past several years,” Rengo President Tomoko Yoshino said at the meeting. “We aim to create a stable virtuous cycle of wages, the economy and prices in this spring's shunto.”
Keidanren Chairman Masakazu Tokura said, “This must be the year to stabilize the momentum for wage increases that has been building over the past two years. We will make every effort, including calling for considering raising the base in salaries.”
In its management and labor policy report on Jan. 21, Keidanren emphasized that it is calling for base pay increases using stronger language than last year to its member companies.
Keidanren intends that the demand for increases in the base pay will “create a thriving middle class and realize structural wage increases.”
HIGH 5% HIKE IN 2024
According to Rengo’s calculations, as a result of the 2024 shunto, the average wage increase for regular employees was 5.10 percent including regular wage hikes, the highest in 33 years.
Rengo set the target for wage increases in this year’s shunto at 5 percent or more, the same as in 2024. It also added an additional 1 percent to this target for small and midsize companies’ employees to correct the increasingly widening wage disparities between large and small to midsize companies.
Wage hike demands from each labor union are expected starting from mid-February and responses from each major company will be concentrated around mid-March.
In Japan, every spring, labor unions demand that the management of companies raise employees’ wages and improve working conditions.
Rengo creates a general framework of demands for the shunto negotiations. Then, labor unions at individual companies negotiate with management on their specific demands.
(This article was written by Takaya Katada and Hiroaki Kimura.)
EDITORIAL: Employers, labor unions should strike deals for real wage hikes
January 25, 2024
Management joins labor’s call for wage hikes at 'shunto' meeting
February 2, 2024
Unions at large firms win major wage hikes in ‘shunto’ talks
March 13, 2024
Keidanren chief: Pay-scale raise unlikely in spring ‘shunto’
December 8, 2020
Pay hikes hit 33-year high driven by rising prices, labor shortages
July 3, 2024
Keidanren urges members to raise wages as ‘social responsibility’
January 24, 2023
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