The Spring Wage Negotiation at Motor Company A in 1984

The theme of this paper is to examine the spring wage negotiation at Motor Company A in 1984. In the beginning, I'll describe the trend of wage increase at Company A. In the early 1980s the difference of wage raise between Company A and the rival Company B was not very large, but since 1986 the difference has become much larger. The rate of wage raise at Company A has begun fluctuating more than before, being influenced by the company performance. The fact reflects the change of the 'industrial relations' at Company A in 1986. Until then the union A was regulating wage at Company A relatively strong and the management seems to have thought that its regulation was the obstacle to determine wage according to the company's ability to pay. Next, I'll focus on the collective bargaining in 1984. In the bargaining, the management explained their opinion that the ability to pay was more important than consideration of worker's life under the current situation, worrying about the bad performance of Company A and the increase of the labor cost. In addition to it, the management were trying to make the difference of performance between the Company A and B reflect more on wage determination. On the contrary the union thought, taking the company performance into account, that the actual situations of worker's life and labor were more important, which was clearly different from the above-stated management's opinion. And the union insisted critically that the reason of the bad performance was attributed not to the workers at the work place but to the business policy, because the workers making great efforts were not responsible for the bad performance. We must pay attention to the fact that the union were trying not to expand the difference of wage raise from Company B in the latter half of the collective bargaining. The executives strongly criticised that the difference of the two company's performance would amount to the larger difference of wage raise. Incidently, we can find several features of the workers' opinions during the bargaining. Firstly, the workers at the work place were unconvinced of the explanation based on the company's ability to pay. Secondly, many workers criticized the business policy. It's worth while giving attention to the fact that kumichou class, who were the terminal foremen at Company A, expressed their dissatisfaction with the reduction in force at the work place and the marketing policy. Because the kumichou class are the key persons for both the integration of the workers by the management and the hold on the workers by the union. While the union's demand was to raise 12,290 yen per head including stipulated wage increase, that is, by 6 percent. Labor and management agreed on a compromise figure of 10,100 yen. That means the average wage increase was 4.93 percent. The content of compromise settlement didn't meet the original requirement, but the difference of wage raise between Company A and B was confined to 200 yen, though the management wanted to make it larger than that. As to this result, we should memorize that there still remained the problem about the relations between personnel cost and productivity. This problem was posed again in the following bonus negotiation in 1984.