23
Against the rightwing offensive in the Japanese labour movement by Yohichi SAKAI
In a previous article in International Viewpoint, I explained how the ruling Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) won a big political victory in the June 1980 elections. This victory allowed the right-wing to take the initiative within the dupanese labour movement, displacing the reformist Sohyo federation
This current had held a central position in the Japanese trade-union movement since the 1950s.
The present article will look at the political retreat of the reformist trade-union leaderships and the fight for an alternative class-struggle leadership in the Japanese union movement.
RIGHT-WING COMPANY UNIONS
TAKE THE OFFENSIVE The company unions launched a vigorous campaign to 'unify' the trade-union movement under their leadership. In this project they had the full backing of the bourgeoisie and the LDP govern-
The majority of the Sohyo bureaucracy is closely linked to the Socialist Party and the federation constitutes the trade-union base of the SP. The Communist Party forms a substantial minority current within the confederation.
The level of unionsation public sector workers is very high, and this is where Sohyo has the bulk of its
It is the dominant federation in this sector; organising in the national railways, the postal system, public education, and local administration.
In the private sector Sohyo organises mainly smaller engineering plants and in private bus and railway
The right-wing company unions control the steel and chemical
Within the Churitsu-Roren, the key industrial federation is that of the electrical and electronic workers. Although Churitsu-Roren is led by pro-management forces, it had a joint campaign committee with the Sohyo for the annual spring wage increase campaign throughout the 1970s.
The Churitsu-Roren unions support industries. The IMF-JC was set up in 1964, comprising the big company unions in shipbuilding, heavy engineering, cars, goods, across the trade-union confederations. It had 1.87 million membership in 1980. Kagaku-Rokyo was formed in the same way in 1980. It has 655,000 workers.
From the mid-1960s to the mid1970s the Sohyo, the SP, and the CP formed a solid reformist bloc in the working class in opposition to the LDP government and the DSP. The right-wing DSP always been a minority, SP-CP bloc the political majority, in the there is a discrepancy between the balance of forces in the trade-union organisations and at the electoral level. The social-democratic reformists in the Sohyo are entrenched in the public sector. The right-wing promanagement forces have their strongholds in the steel and chemical unions of the federation. Thus, within the trade-union organisations, there is a fifty-fifty split between the right wing and the reformists. However, as Table 2 reveals, withment.
To understand what this so-called unity project implied, it is necessary to look at the composition of the trade- Parliamentary representation of the SP, CP, DSP, SDU
(number of lower house seats) union movement.
There are three major trade-union confederations. They organise 12.76 million workers from a total workforce of 56 million. There are 39.71 million wage earners, 11.35 million of whom are in
These three confederathe right wing of the Socialist Party in
1958
1960(*) 1963
1967
DSP
17
23
30
145
SP
166
144
140
SDU (**)
CP
3 in the working class as a whole, the Sohyo-SP-CP bloc is dominant. 1969 1972 1976 1979 1980
31 19 29 36 32
90 118 123 107 107
3
14 38 19 41 29 manufacturing.
(*) Between 1958 and 1960, the DSP (Democratic Socialist Party) split from the SP.
tions are: Sohyo (the General Council of
(**) The Social Democratic Union, a rightwing split from the SP in 1979.
Japanese Trade Unions), Churitsu-Roren of Neutral
(Coordination Conference
Trade
Unions), and Domei (Japanese
Confederation of Labour). The composition and relative size of these federations are illustrated in Table 1.
Major Trade Union Confederations
(1980/thousands)
Sohyo: total
Public/government sector
Private sector
Churitsu-Roren : total
(almost all private sector)
Shinsanbetu: total
(very recently combined with
Churitsu-Roren)
Domei: total
Private sector
Public/government sector
The rest
Total Japanese unionists
24
They organise almost exclusively in the private sector.
Domei is a straightforward anti-communist, right-wing union federation. Its apparatus is closely linked to the Democratic Socialist Party, which is a right-wing social-democratic party. DSP takes a strongly pro-US imperialism gives de facto support to the LDP government. Churitsu-Roren, Domei is based mainly in the private sector. It organises primarily in shipbuilding, the car industry, ship. ping, and textile industry. is extremely weak in the public sector.
There are a number of cross federation organisations. The International Metalworkers Federation-Japanese Council (IMF-JC) and the Kagaku Rokyo (Conference of Chemical Workers Unions) are national consultative bodies. They organise the pro-management union forces in the metal and engineering, and chemical
The right wing saw their chance to go on the offensive after the June 1980 victory of the LDP government.
In September 1980 the 'Committee to Promote Labour Unity' was set up. It included the presidents of five industrial federations in the private sector, and one national union, across the major federa-
This committee drafted a programme, that was straight class-collaborationism, in close collaboration with the top Sohyo leadership, for the projected new national trade union centre. mediate objective of this move is to unify all the unions and federations in the private sector under a single national centre, and thus isolate the workers in the public and government sectors.
This move comes at a time when the government has made it a major priority to make cuts in the public sector. The right-wing company unions com-
Sohyo it has entered into as a result of its suc-
PETER GRAHAM;
MEMORIAL LIBRARY pletely support this so-called rationalisation, having already collaborated their own managements over rationalisation in the private sector.
If the unity move is successful it would isolate the workers in the public sector who are faced with massive cuts
These amount to the loss of about 575,000 jobs in the following sectors; rail 74,000 jobs lost from a total workforce of 420,000; 50,000 workers cut; 65,000 jobs lost in telecommunication; and 400,000 redundancies in local administration from a total of 1,950,000. Support for the 'unity'
Japanese workers in solidarity with Solidarnose (DR) project in the unions from the top Sohyo leadership is a logical result of their capitulation to the bosses on this attack on their members' jobs.
The second objective of the rightwing campaign is to break up tional bloc of the Sohyo, the SP, and the CP, and to form a new right-wing social-democratic majority working class, change the character of the SP.
The president of the steel unions federation is one of the key promoters of this campaign. He has expressed their aims very clearly:
to eliminate Marxism and the concept of the class struggle from the SP, particularly to destroy the Socialist Society faction, and transform the SP into a party like the German SPD, possibly leadto a fusion to promote nuclear power stations to rescue the country from an energy cri-
-to abandon the struggle against rationalisation and the 'industrial restructuring' policy;
-to revamp the national railway and other unprofitable public corporations as capitalist concerns.
Opposition to the unity campaign and the proposed rationalisation of the public sector stimulated a process of political recomposition with the Sohyo-CPSP bloc.
In June 1981, "The Committee for the Promotion of Labour Unity' issued its public appeal for action, together with its class-collaborationist programme, as the basis of unity. Broad opposition movements began to develop in the ranks of the Sohyo unions in the latter half of 1981.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF OPPOSITION July 1981: At the congress of the chemical workers federation, 120 delegates out of 314 opposed the unity move. Most of this opposition came from the small to medium-sized factories. At the annual congress of the private railway and bus workers, union delegates from the medium-sized companies expressed their opposition. The Sohyo annual congress could not decide. The CP-led unions and federations were strongly opposed, knowing that they would be sacrificed immediately to this 'unity'. The SP-affiliated leaderships were split. Opposition to the right-wing unity call came mainly from the small to middle-sized plants.
August 1981: Three advisors of the federation issued an open letter to the Sohyo leadership, opposing the right-wing trade-union unity call. These three were:
former general secretary, and leader of the Socialist Society in the Socialist Party; K. Ota, former president, position and leader of a small group in the SP with close relations with the CP; and M. Ichikawa, also a former president, and previously president of the union for employees at Us military bases, a sponsor of the Rohdoh Johoh (Labour Information) fortnightly. This action represented the left-reformist opposition to the unity call.
The Sohyo union of engineering workers, Zenkoku-Kinzoku, was unable to agree at its congress on what attitude to take to the unity call, given the differences within the SP, and the opposition of the CP and the left wing.
September 1981: Six Sohyo fedthe dock, shipbuilding, industries and taxi drivers and printersformed a bloc against the selective policy of the unity campaign, aimed at excluding CP-led unions.
October 1981: The private sector federations affiliated to Sohyo met to discuss the unity campaign. not an overall majority in favour. The vote went:10 for, 4 against, 10 absten-
The four federations which voted against were CP-led. stained were dominated by left reformists in the SP. However, they were relatively small, under 20,000 members in each. In general, all CP or left-SP unions and federations organise workers in small to medium-sized plants, or are the minority unions in big companies.
November 1981: federation of teachers unions held a special Central Committee to discuss the unity campaign. The president of the federation is also the president of Sohyo. Out of 235 members who attended the special session, 165 were SP supporters and 70 were CP supporters. The SP supporters were split on the question with 117 for unity and 48 against. Together with the CP, this opposition was sufficient to defeat the unity proposal.
This outcome of the meeting has a significant effect among the unions in the public sector. The national railway workers union and the federation of municipal employees took a 'wait and see' position. Thus, when Sohyo held a special congress on the question, the situation was totally confused and the congress could not come to a clear decision.
SOHYO LEADERS MANOEUVRE
Between November and December the debate heated up. Meetings of union activists opposed to the right-wing unity proposal were organised in many cities by the Rohdoh Johoh (Labour Information) current. The bureaucratic leadership of Sohyo pulled out all the stops to manoeuvre the federation into accepting the pro-
On December 7, an enlarged council meeting of the Sohyo was held at which the federation leadership forced through acceptance of the unity proposal despite strong opposition. One condition was made: that the selective exclusion of unions was rejected. Some Sohyo unions and federations were given the go-ahead to join the Preparatory Committee for
These comprised about 460,000 union members, in steel, chemicals, non-ferrous mining, telecommunication, sub-contracting, and forwarding
Thus, the Preparatory Committee for Labour Unity in the Private Sector was set up on December 14, 1981. It comprised 39 industrial federations and national unions across the three major trade union federations. After it was established, the engineering workers union, Zenkoku-Kinzoku; the private bus and workers union; and others also joined, despite the opposition of minorities in the unions. By February 1981, only the dockers union and the printers federation within Sohyo remained outside the committee along with the four CP-led unions/federations.
The project of the Preparatory Committee is to set up a confederation of national unions and industrial federations that would organise around 4.5 million private sector workers.
We have seen that, despite strong opposition, the overwhelming majority of the reformist Sohyo leadership have accepted the initiative of the right wing deep crisis of the Sohyo leadership, which
cessive retreats in the latter half of the
The right-wing pro-management forces in the private sector are now on the offensive and the Sohyo reformists are unable to counter them.
The CP-led Liaison Committee of for Promotion of the United Front decided, at a congress held just after the establishment of the Preparatory Committee, to strengthen its own functioning. This Liaison Committee is composed of CP-led federations, unions, and union branches, mostly with-
The project of the Liaison Committee is to set up a 'working class and democratic national centre' for trade
The current of union activists organised around Rohdoh Johoh (Labour Information) had opposed the unity campaign from the beginning. the Rohdoh Johoh fortnightly journal in 1977, and the efforts to organise around it, represented a conscious build an independent class-struggle current that could respond to the rightward moves of the Sohyo leadership in the late
THE FIGHT FOR AN ALTERNATIVE LEADERSHIP The Rohdoh Johoh current, despite its limited presence, intervened within Sohyo against the right-wing unity camthe capitulationist course of the federation leadership. During the latter half of 1981, a closer relationship was established between the Rohdoh Johoh current and the three advisors of Sohyo who had issued the open letter against the unity campaign. were organised jointly by Rohdoh Johoh and the Sohyo left reformists.
The forces who organised these actions and the CP-led organisations in Sohyo became a de facto opposition bloc within the federation. During the latter half of 1981, Rohdoh Johoh became a refederation for the first time. Rohdoh Johoh remains weak at the level of the national organisation. Only inside the engineering workers union, ZenkokuKinzoku, has it begun to be established as a nation-wide opposition to the reformist leadership. In this union, it has won support from 106 of the total 1,300 bran-
The CP has support in about 300 The Rohdoh Johoh current has pockets of influence telecommunication workers, workers in the national and private railways, postal workers, municipal employees, teachers, dockers, etc. annual conference, this year, 1,236 trade union activists were present.
There is a consolidation of the right wing in the private sector around the Preparatory Committee and the Sohyo leadership is continuing to pursue its class col-
However, struggles against the cutbacks in the public sector remain on the agenda, and opposition currents remain among the engineering workers, chemical workers, private bus and railway workers, and in other sectors.
In this situation, the traditional hold of the reformist Sohyo leadership is liable to fragment more and more. task for the Rohdoh Johoh current is to intervene in this process to build itself as a national class-struggle tendency—a unified workers left opposition in the trade
The orientation of the Japanese Trotskyists is to build the Rohdoh Johoh current as an alternative leadership for a current of class struggle workers through united front activity with the left in Sohyo and the SP. And to develop a bloc with the CP and its trade union activists against the and the classcollaborationists in Sohyo.
build the Rohdoh Johoh as an opposition movement not only within the trade unions but also at the level of all political struggles-the anti-militarist solidarity activities with East Asian workers and peasants, and with the Polish workers of Solidarnosc.
To our r