Japan: how Nakasone follows Thatcher
By ALAN THORNETT THE renowned "Japanese economic miracle" which had reg living sanded do bully is.
ing living standards but for life" for Japanese workers is
The signs were already there when Yasuhiro Nakasone became Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister in 1980. Nakasone represented the in-
Reaganite/Thatcher monetarist economic policies. spending was cut on welfare services while Nakasone set to work on conallow closer military alliance to the USA and increased military spending.
In fact Nakasone economic crisis. By the end of the economy was not raising the revenues to meet the huge state been introduced when the economy was expanding rapidly in the 1960s and early "70s.
The government met the deficit by issuing government bonds. By 1984, trillion yen, the largest single item in the 1984 budget.
Despite this unprecedented situation, the government never attempted to tap the profits of the big Japanese
- which were same time running at record Ivels -despite record and small size enterprises.
Instead, like Thatcher, Nakasone's priorities have been further attacks the working class. There have been two main attacks direct for higher productivity through the wellestablished "participation" operating in productive industry; and the diversification of production into medium sized factories which are not organised even by the scab "yellow" unions which control the big plants.
Their wages are one third less than in the big corporations. Eighty per cent of Japanese workers now work for such companies, where women workers are drawn in on even lower wages. On average the wages women are only just over 50% of their employment fo their even the 20% of workers in the big corporations find that "job for life" is
Japanese cars for export companies increasingly use contract, part time or seasonal labour to which they don't have to extend job security rights.
organisations made proposals for change in the law to allow workers to be forced out of one industry into another. Companies have in any case been forcing workers to reductions in grades and wages hoping that they will resign rather than accept the new conditions.
One thousand workers at a Nissan Diesel plant near Tokyo have been in most of the workforce in plants from 12 to 60 miles away from Tokyo. For some of them the moves would have meant be at most midnight Tele ting home at almost midnight. "job for life" being offered by Nissan workers chose to fight for their exother leature of Liberal privatisation. In the spring of this year (only months behind British Telecom) the public corporation Nip pon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) was privatised. This made it the biggest private employer in Japan with
At the same time the Japan Tobacco and Salt Corporation was sold off to private capital. Now a Government report has recommended that Japanese National Railway be sold off the private business (Japan has both private and public rail systems).
These measures have implications Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986. Page 19 beyond the economic crisis and raising money to pay off government debts; they represent the other line of attack on the working class through
Japanese trade union
The Japanese unions have been moving rightward for a long time. Since the yellow unions broke the independent unions in productive industry in the early 1960s, the most progressive force in the Japanese abour movement was the socialistled Trade Union Federation Sohyo (General Council of Trade Unions of
Sohyo was the driving force of the offensive (the shunto) which was the focal point of Trade Union activity in the 1960s. In the last 10 years, however, the shunto has run organised against it, and the public sector unions have been weakened. Now the unions have little effect over wage levels and wage increases have than those achieved by workers in Europe
At the same time there has been a fall-off of union membership, 35% of the labour force were organised in 1970; this has now fallen to 29%.
Now an even more dangerous process is taking place. If is called the "reconstitution labour movement or the "unification of the confederations".
In 1982 an initiative was made to establish a new all-Japan trade union
Zenminrokyo, would embrace the whole trde union developments for many years in the Japanese labour movement, Sohyo is to join this new
It will be dominated by the yellow unions in the export-based productive industries.
It has to be said that privtisation does face Sohyo with a very difficult situation: it stands to lose almost a million public sector workers to the private sector round of privatisations are pleted. At the same time, some of the unions which have been Sohyo unions in the past are in the rip of the right wing drift, and are
"business unionism". These are clearly factors in the decision to join the new federation.
At the same time the right wing leaders of Zenminrokyo intend to exclude any "left-wing' public sector
unions from the new federation by setting Pator (inderaty isolated) public sector federation, pushing them into it. Many of them will be members of unions controlled by the Japanese Communist Party such as the Japan Teachers Union; the all-Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers Union; the Medical Workers Union and the all-Japan Toansport and General Workers Union. becomes isolated, the ICP intend to set up its own trade union grouping: but they will not take that step before the dissolution of Sohyo.
The ICP generally opposes strikes in the public sector since they subordinate everything to both local and national election campaigns. In the public sector, they argue that strikes are wrong, since the public services are vould alienate the public! public property and to
The situation in the Japanese labour movement is very difficult indeed. The march to the right in the unions and the systematic supression of the remaining progressive sections of if are a response by the yellow federations to the increasing problem of Japanese capitalism as reflected in the economic crisis.
But there are many militants continuing to fight on a class struggle basis.
Although many of them have been victimised by management and by the right wing, the objective conditions are on their side. Despite the success of Japanese capitalism breaking up the independent unions in the
60s, and the success of Japanese labour techniques in harnessing the
Japanese working class ideologically and physicaliductine requirements socialism, and a miltiant struggle against capitalism to achieve it, remains the only future for Japanese workers.
Hopefully, some of the moves now being made to bring together militant activists from the various unions will be successful.
tuse on strike
By HARRY SLOAN
THOUGH the street battles of
South Africa may grab headlines here. and the megadebts of Latin America may more
Worry the powder keg beneath dictatorship
President Ferdinand Marcos.
IMF after consisteniy both production;
$26bn debts are owed to US banks chiefs.
(and cabinet Minister) Imelda.
principal
Marcos team between them charge.
carried through the assembly - sive dictatorship have long been
How long a
Phillipines powder keg?
families sugar industry more
Philippines and cents today.
British
American bankers, don't forget the
Philippines of
The IMF has not forgotten it: the Philippines is filth among the top debtor nations, exchange and is receiving heavy treatment from the failing to meet economic targets or reform its flagrantly corrupt and decrepit economic structures.
The current IMF pressure is sufficient to is make it unlikely that the Philippines will be able to raise new commercial bank loans: the last $400m in bank loans was instantly consumed in interest payments on existing debts. One third of the country's
- and
Rescan is clearly worried, as are Pentagon ing dispossessed
Philippines credit-worthiness has not been helped by the notorious corruption of the elite around Marcos and his wife
Opposition members of the National Assembly have tabled an unprecedented motion for the
Impeachment of Marcos, Imelda and other in to