Japan’s union group to seek 6% wage rise at next spring’s talks

TOKYO, Nov 6 (Reuters) – Japan’s largest industrial union UA Zensen will seek a 6% total wage increase, of which 4% will be base pay hikes, at next spring’s negotiations, a union official said on Monday.

Annual wage negotiations effectively kicked off on Monday and will be concluded on Jan. 23, before Japanese blue-chip companies offer next year’s wage hike plan in March.

This year, Japanese firms offered workers the highest wage hikes in 30 years. Average Japanese workers’ wages had remained virtually flat since the asset-bubble burst in the early 1990s until this year.

“We strengthened the resolve for wage hikes, emphasizing the determination to ‘tackle’ the ‘basis of’ the wage hikes, instead of just aiming for around 6%,” the UA Zensen official said.

About 2,291 unions are grouped under the umbrella of UA Zensen, representing 1.8 million workers in the service, textiles, distribution and other sectors, making it Japan’s largest sector-to-sector union.

UA Zensen will formally come up with its executive plan for wage hikes on Dec. 6 and decides on demands for the 2024 wage negotiations on Jan. 23, before spring negotiations with major companies to be concluded in mid-March.

It would be the second straight year that UA Zensen’s pay demand would exceed that of Rengo, Japan’s largest trade union confederation, which last month called for pay hikes of 5% or more next year.

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