Japanese Companies Offer 5.26 Pct Pay Hikes in “Shunto”

Tokyo, March 23 (Jiji Press)–Japanese companies have offered pay hikes of 5.26 pct on a weighted average basis in this year’s “shunto” spring labor-management negotiations, the first tally by the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, or Rengo, showed Monday. The result attested to the management side’s eagerness to continue providing large pay increases although the size of the combined pay scale and regular hikes was smaller than the 5.46 pct logged in the first tally for the previous year’s shunto. For smaller labor unions with fewer than 300 member workers, an average hike of 5.05 pct was offered, down 0.04 percentage point. On Wednesday, many large companies including automakers and electronics makers fully met labor unions’ wage demands amid prolonged inflation and labor shortages. Close attention is now being paid to whether small companies will also offer robust pay increases, leading to narrower wage gaps with large corporations. Rengo aims to achieve wage hikes of 5 pct or more overall in this year’s shunto. It has set a target of 6 pct or more for small companies. “We have made a good start,” Rengo President Tomoko Yoshino said at a press conference Monday. On concerns about the deteriorating business environment due to rising tensions in the Middle East, Yoshino said, “Each union is talking with the management side separately from wage issues.” The first tally covered 1,100 unions that had received offers from management as of 10 a.m. Monday. The average monthly pay increase offered, including annual pay raises, declined 141 yen from a year earlier to 17,687 yen. Basic salary increases offered to 960 unions averaged 13,013 yen, up 442 yen. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]