Full Wage Talks Start in Japan with Labor-Management Forum

Tokyo, Jan. 30 (Jiji Press)–A labor-management forum hosted by the Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren, was held in Tokyo on Friday, kicking off full-fledged “shunto” spring wage negotiations. The focal point of this year’s shunto is whether pay increases exceeding 5 pct will spread across small and midsize companies, which employ some 70 pct of domestic workers, to bring about stable real wage growth in the country, observers said. In the 2025 shunto, major firms’ workers won wage hikes of over 5 pct for the second straight year, according to the Japan Trade Union Confederation, or Rengo. Keidanren regards pay scale increases as “the standard” for the 2026 labor-management negotiations, Yoshinobu Tsutsui, chairman of the top Japanese business group, said in his opening speech at the meeting. “We hope many companies, including small and medium-sized firms, will raise pay scales.” To achieve across-the-board pay scale hikes, Tsutsui suggested that smaller businesses improve productivity and that major firms work together to have appropriate cost-based pricing take root. In Japan, pay hikes have yet to outpace inflation, with real wages posting 11 straight months of decline through November 2025. From the labor side, representatives of industrial unions expressed concerns about significant drops in real wages, particularly among middle-aged and senior workers, as well as widening wage gaps between large companies and small and midsize firms. “While companies prioritize shareholders, are they not treating lightly the distribution (of profits) to workers?” Tomoko Yoshino, president of Rengo, the umbrella body for labor unions nationwide, said in her speech at the forum meeting. Yoshino said that a path to real wage growth of 1 pct should be put in place. “We must hold deep discussions so that both labor and management can be satisfied,” she added. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]