Japan 1: How management control Japan's unions
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
This is the first of a series of articles about the Japanese labour movement, written after a recent visit to Japan. The first two articles are an historical sketch of the post-war Japanese labour movement. Later articles will deal with the Japanese motor industry, some of the problems of the trade unions and militant Japanese workers, and the strategy of the employers today.
MILITANT workers in Japan face very difficult conditions. The workers' movement is dominated by yellow unions — particularly in manufacturing industry. These are unions created, built, and controlled directly by management. In many cases they were built in opposition to existing independent unions which they eventually destroyed.
Through these unions, the Japanese capitalist class have tremendous material and ideological domination over the great majority of Japanese workers. Despite the recent stagnation of the Japanese economy and a rise in unemployment, this domination remains intact today, and presents a major problem.
It has important roots in the development of the Japanese labour movement in the immediate post-war period.
Before World War 2, only 10% of Japanese workers were organised, and the unions were very trade-oriented. In 1938 the unions were banned under war regulations.
After the Japanese defeat and the dropping of the H-Bombs, there was a total collapse of society in Japan. The bourgeoisie were in disarray. Absolute control was in the hands of the US occupation forces under General McArthur.
Constitution
The physical conditions created a rapid rise in the militancy of the working class. Mass demonstrations at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo demanded food and the punishment of war criminals.
For their own reasons, the actions of the occupation forces added to the rising militancy.
Motivated by the desire of US imperialism to destroy Japanese militarism and eliminate a powerful imperialist rival in the Pacific Ocean, McArthur imposed a new Japanese constitution which had some progressive aspects. The re-militarisation of Japan was banned (formally, anyway); the land was redistributed to the farmers, and trade unions were legalised.
There was a spectacular development of trade union organisation. The fastest growth of all was by the Confederation of Industrial Unions (Sambetsu), which had 1.6 million members by 1946. By 1948, 50% of Japanese workers were organised.
The new unions were organised mostly on a company-by-company basis — which set the pattern for the post-war movement.
They tended to be militant, both because of the extreme poverty and starvation which existed, and because they took a stand against Japanese remilitarisation. Strikes and occupations swept the country.
Socialist
Under these conditions the pre-war political formations re-emerged. The Japanese Socialist Party, a right wing splinter from it, and the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), re-established themselves and spread rapidly.
[Photograph. Caption: "Treaties made Japan the USA's strategic outpost in the Far East". Prime Minister Nakasone with Ronald Reagan]
World political conditions, however, were changing fast. With the onset of the cold war and the imminent victory of the People's Liberation Army in China, the USA reversed its policies in Japan.
McArthur was instructed to throw his 'liberalisation' policies into reverse, and to promote the resurgence of Japanese capitalism as an anti-communist ally in Asia.
The general strike of February 1947, which threatened to reach revolutionary proportions, was banned by McArthur, who proceeded to carry out a purge of tens of thousands of members of the JCP and trade union militants from the factories.
Strikes in the public sector were banned. On the eve of the Korean war, the JCP was banned, and basic freedoms restored at the end of the war were suppressed.
Military
Under these conditions Japanese reaction began to re-establish itself. The USA began a programme of massive military aid. Arms factories closed after the war were re-opened. Military bases were reactivated for the Korean war. A new Japanese army — the National Police Reserve — was established, in violation of McArthur's own constitution.
Sambetsu, which was under JCP leadership, was greatly weakened during this period. Its membership dropped by 75%.
Sohyo, the only progressive trade union federation in Japan today, was born in this period as a reactionary initiative.
As soon as the Korean war began, a movement inside Sambetsu which had been fighting for democratisation against the Stalinist leadership joined together with a number of right-wing anti-communist federations and formed Sohyo.
It joined the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and declared support for the United Nations/US forces in Korea. Sambetsu was decimated in the process.
Sohyo, however, quickly radicalised, swinging to a militant position and opposing militarisation. In alliance with the JSP, it was to become a major political force in Japan.
[Photograph of a demonstration. Caption: "The Japanese capitalist class have a tremendous ideological domination". Demonstration against relaxation of import controls]
Sohyo's second conference, in 1951, called for a peace treaty with all the allied powers, including the USSR and the People's Republic of China, Japanese neutrality in the Cold War and the Korean war, removal of US bases, and opposition to rearmament.
The US occupation of Japan ended in April 1952, with the signing of two treaties — the Peace Treaty and the USA/Japan Security Treaty.
The treaties made Japan the USA's strategic outpost in the Far East. They provided for the free use of Japanese military bases by the USA, and the separation of Okinawa from Japan to become the USA's biggest foreign base.
The conditions in the treaties provoked massive anti-American riots in Tokyo on May Day 1952.
The first half of the 1950s were a period of considerable class struggle, as the resurgent capitalist class fought to take back the gains that the independent trade unions had made in the immediate post-war period.
Nissan
Huge battles took place in a number of key industries. Nissan car workers fought pitched battles against lockouts, thugs, and the police, as the employers moved to smash the independent Nissan Workers' Union — the most important union affiliated to the National Car Workers' Union (Zenji) — and to gain control of the tracks, imposing speed-up and mobility of labour.
Eventually the workers were defeated, resulting in the smashing of the independent union and the establishment of a yellow union inspired and entirely controlled by the management.
Electrical power workers and miners were involved in long strikes. Workers in steel and in the arms factories resisted the management offensive.
Overall, however, the employers won and the yellow unionism so basic today had taken root in earnest.
During these first ten post-war years the conditions were created for the phenomenal growth of Japanese capitalism during the 1960s and '70s.
By the mid-1950s the Japanese economy had reached its pre-war level. The Liberal Democratic Party — which rules Japan today — was formed as the sole political representative of Japanese capitalism, and became Japan's permanent party of government.
The Japanese Socialist Party (as it is today) was formed by a merger of the right and left socialist parties, and allied with Sohyo. It was to become the main party of opposition, in alliance with the JCP, which now favoured a 'parliamentary road to socialism'.
Two other events in that period were also to shape Japanese politics for a long time to come. One was the adoption by Sohyo of the Spring Offensive tactic — the Shunto. The other was the emergence of the anti-nuclear movement, triggered by bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean and the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Shunto tactic was adopted by Sohyo in 1955 as both a reaction and an accommodation to the defeats of the previous period, and a means to continue an offensive stance in the new situation.
The Shunto is not collective negotiation between the trade union federation, on behalf of the affiliated unions, and the employers — it is the co-ordination of the individual claims from the various company-based unions, from March to May each year.
Unions which were considered to be the strongest in a particular year would be chosen as the spearhead of the campaign. They could get the support of the unions as a whole, and if they won the others would negotiate in the wake of their victory, using it as a precedent.
Guidelines for the claims would be laid down in the early days by Sohyo and later, when other unions became involved, by the Spring Struggle committee.
There was a problem, however, since the majority of Sohyo membership were in the public sector, and in the public sector strikes were, and are, illegal.
This has been overcome by go-slows, work-to-rules, and in some cases very tenacious illegal strikes in sections such as the state railways, postal workers, and teachers.
Although much of its success resulted from the phenomenal and sustained economic boom, the importance of the shunto was that it created an annual confrontation between employers and labour which developed the combativity of the Japanese workers under very difficult conditions.
Domei
The employers were forced to create their own organisation to combat it each year.
Also in the mid-1950s, there was the amalgamation of a number of right-wing trade union confederations to form what is still the main right-wing trade union confederation today — the Japan Congress of Labour, or Domei, unions.
It began immediately to fight to create right-wing pro-management unions by splitting the Sohyo unions. They were particularly successful in industry.
Domei became supreme in steel, shipbuilding, electronics and car production, creating the basis for the yellow-union domination which is the most striking feature of the Japanese labour movement today.