The Sohyo’s rival, Domei, the Japan Confederation of Labor, has 2.1 million members, 18 percent of organized workers. Domei supports the Democratic Socialist Party. The Churitsuroren, the Federation of Independent Unions, has 1.4 million members, 12 percent of the total. The smallest of the four national organizations is the Shinsanbetsu, the National Federation of Industrial Organizations, with 76,000 members, 0.6 percent of unionized workers. Not affiliated with the larger organizations are a surprising 4.1 million union members, fully a third of the total number of organized workers.
In Japan, strikes are generally brief, peaceful, and successful for the unions. Toyota, remarkably, has not had a strike in over ten years. However, not all labor-management problems are simply solved. In 1971, for example, two major railway unions were locked in struggle with the Japan National Railways, a government-owned monopoly. The railway was caught with a deficit estimated at $1.5 billion due to increased wages, low fares, and the need for equipment. The railway executives went on a “productivity” drive based on harder work, cooperation by labor, and sacrifice. But what resulted was illegal union “busting” practices and total alienation of labor. Most of the fifteen formal complaints filed by the two unions with the National Labor Relations Board involved bribery or threats to union members by management. Workers were told, the complaints alleged, to quit the private union and to join the pro-company union if they wanted preferential job treatment. Some workers were told that they would never get promoted unless they joined the company union.
The Labor Board ruled that five of the complaints were true, and was studying the rest. When one of the unions produced a tape recording of an executive conference stressing the need to break the labor laws cleverly, the President of the Japan National Railways made a public apology for the “regrettable, unfair labor practices” engaged in by his executives. However, company harassment of workers had resulted in eight attributable suicides by company employees.
Despite such an occurrence, labor in Japan is quite well-paid by indigenous standards, and the annual spring wage offensive by the unions — the shunto as it is called — always results in substantial wage increases.
In April of 1973 the two major unions of the Japan National Railways called off a massive 72-hour strike that had halted almost all of Japan’s public transportation. More than 24 million people had been deprived of normal transportation, and an estimated 320,000 employees had been forced to sleep in their offices in Tokyo. The unions originally demanded raises of $90 in their average monthly pay of $339, but accepted an average wage increase of $56 a month offered by a government advisory group.
Because much of Japanese production is still labor-intensive, there periodically occur labor shortages which put a brake on the growth of the GNP. In 1970-71 there was such a shortage. In 1969 there were 45 million teen-agers in Japan, but by 1971, due to late marriages and family planning, the number of them dropped to 24 million. Japanese businesses need low-paid beginners because in Japan, wages, and thus labor costs, are directly related to the age of the worker. Business and industry pay on seniority and not for individual talent or production. A beginning teen-age worker earns only about one-third of the average wage. In 1970, 200,000 junior high school graduates entered the work force, 18 percent fewer than the previous year. There were 1.1 million jobs for them; only 17 percent were filled. In the same year, 666,000 high school graduates entered the work force, but only 14 percent of the 4.7 million jobs waiting for them were filled.
Although the recession of 1970-72 and the “dollar shock” has caused many Japanese companies to curtail investment in capital goods and even to suspend the hiring of the 1972 graduates, Japan will need 2.5 million new workers a year until at least 1975. Consequently, although there is a decline of 29 percent in job opportunities, the 735,000 secondary school graduates of 1972 have an estimated 2.6 million jobs waiting for them, about three and a half jobs per applicant.
According to a Mitsubishi Bank forecast in the spring of 1973, the declining Japanese birth rate coupled to shorter working hours will be one of the largest factors acting in concert with the shortage of land and natural resources that would check the nation’s economic growth in the future.
Much of the Japanese economic success is due to the diligent dexterity of its female workers who assemble with care and precision the flood of Japanese cameras, watches, and electronic devices. About 40 percent of the Japanese work force consists of females.
In Tokyo it seems that the sidewalks are continually being repaired. The portable machinery used on these projects adds considerably to the noise pollution of the cities. However, there is still much hand labor done with pick, shovel, and hammer.
AGRICULTURE
Before the Pacific War 44 percent of the Japanese working population was employed in agriculture. After the destruction of the war, 50 percent of them were on the farms. But with the rebuilding of the ruined industries, the percentage fell to thirty by 1961 and to under twenty by 1967. In 1970 the number of agricultural workers decreased by 6 percent, and in 1971 by almost 9 percent. Now less than 15 percent of the work force is in agriculture. In America, less than 5 percent of the work force is in farming.
Before the war there were 5.5 million farm households of almost 37 million people, about half the population. In 1970 there were still more than 5 million farm households, but the number of people was only 26 million, now only a quarter of the population. Every year sees more and more people, especially the young, leave the rural areas to fill the labor shortages in the better paying jobs in business, industry, and construction. Farming is so arduous and the remuneration so low that the first-born sons of farm families — the ones who are traditionally supposed to inherit the family property and to carry on the family name — are finding it increasingly difficult to find wives. Young women prefer the easier life and the modern conveniences of the cities and are reluctant to live the lives their mothers led on the farms. In addition to the young people who leave the farms for permanent residence in the urban centers, an increasing proportion of men with families leave for work in the cities or on distant construction jobs. This results in what the Japanese call “san chan” farming, cultivation done by grandparents and housewives. In some farming districts 10 percent or more of the fathers are not living at home. And there are instances where both parents desert the farm for better paying jobs in the cities, and leave their children in the care of aged grandparents. Many educators in the rural areas deplore the effect on children of this absentee parentage, seeing in such job oriented patterns of living the cause of present and future psychological damage to the children. Also, too often fathers or husbands together with their wives go to the cities, and after a period of time are never heard from again.
In 1970 the average farm family income was about $3,900. However, 60 percent of that income was derived from non-farm work. For families which do not have the opportunity to work at other jobs, the income situation is bleak. Because of its limited land and large population, Japan has always been a nation of small farms. Before the war, almost half the farm households farmed less than 1.25 acres each, and a quarter of them farmed between 1.25 and 2.5 acres each. After the war, the American Occupation directed that a land reform program be carried out. By 1950 more than 4.7 million acres formerly owned by 2.3 million landowners were sold to about 4.7 million tenant farmers. Presently, despite the land reform, the average size of farms is still small. According to a survey made by the Tohoku Agriculture Office in eastern Japan, half of all farming families there owned fewer than 2.5 acres of land, and less than 5 percent had farms larger than 7.5 acres. In Iwate Prefecture, in the far northeast, 18 percent of the households are engaged exclusively in farming, with an average of 2.2 acres each. The prefectural average is