Hist 199 Postwar Japan: Labor and the General Strike of 1947

 

Rapid Rise of Labor Unions in Japan from 1945


Although Japan had some labor unions in the early 20th century, they did not have the right to bargain collectively with employers and their legal status was weak. Then in 1940, the labor unions dissolved and their members joined the government-sponsored national workers' organization Sampo, as part of a wartime national reorganization of all civil organizations under central government direction. Sampo remained in existence at the end of the war. American Occupation authorities encouraged Japanese workers to form independent labor unions as early as fall, 1945. A new labor union law was passed in December and took effect in March 1946. The number of workers in unions rose very dramatically from about 5,000 in October 1945, to 5 million by February, 1947. The Occupation General Headquarters (GHQ) initially encouraged the formation of labor unions, but became alarmed when the Sanbetsu labor federation affiliated with the Japan Communist Party and the Sôdômei labor federation affiliated with the Japan Socialist Party planned a nationwide, open-ended general strike for February 1, 1947. A nationwide general strike would mean that all communications, transportation, production facilities, and public services would shut down. 

According to Wikipedia, A general strike (or mass strike) is a strike action in which a substantial proportion of the total labor force in a city, region, or country participates. General strikes are characterized by the participation of workers in a multitude of workplaces, and tend to involve entire communities. General strikes first occurred in the mid-19th century, and have characterized many historically important strikes. The key demand of the strike was improvement of conditions for public sector employees. Four million workers were expected to take part in the strike. During the preparations for the strike, the political atmosphere was tense

In the end, the Occupation banned the general strike the day before it was supposed to begin, and this marked a turning point in Occupation support for labor.

The Rise and Fall of Radical Union Activity


Sanbetsu, the Japan Congress of Industrial Organizations (Nippon Sangyô-betsu Rôdô Kumiai Kaigi), was a national labor union federation founded at the end of 1945 that had links to the newly legal Japan Communist Party. Sanbetsu helped organize workers in both private companies and the public sector, and led a series of strikes in the fall of 1946. The Occupation stopped its efforts to lead a national general strike in January 1947. Sanbetsu was weakened when its leadership was purged during the Red Purge in 1950 and managers began to dismiss labor activists with Communist Party ties. Company managers encouraged workers to form moderate unions as an alternative to the militant Sanbetsu unions. Management then could choose to bargain only with the moderate second union. Over time, moderate unions became dominant in the majority of companies, but militant unions remained powerful in some companies and industries.

Labor Strikes and Production Control


In 1945-46 economic conditions were severe and food was in short supply. Many companies shut down production or laid off workers who desperately needed their jobs. But at the same time, workers felt newly empowered to demand better working conditions and status. The result was a steady rise in labor strikes and slowdowns. When negotiations with management failed, the workers in some factories engaged in “production control” (seisan kanri) by locking out the managers and running the factories by themselves. Production control spread to over 200 mines, factories, railways, and even government offices in the first half of 1946. Click on CHARTS, below, for more information about labor disputes in 1946 and 1947.

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Conflict between labor and management in the form of production control increased in the spring of 1946. However, after the summer, this type of conflict decreased and in its place the number of strikes increased.

The General Strike


All of organized labor seemed ready to support the government employees and when the Joint Struggle Committee scheduled a strike for 1 February 1947, the Japanese government, fearing a general strike, began to make minor concessions. These fell far short of union demands, however, and the strike rapidly gained momentum, stimulated by the anti-government agitation of labour militants including the Communists. After unsuccessful private negotiations with union leaders, SCAP, in the person of General MacArthur, issued a formal order banning the strike and criticizing the union leaders for attempting to use such a ‘deadly social weapon.’

The general strike ban of 1947 was the first instance of SCAP interference in the labor movement on a large scale. However, the change of attitude, brought about by a number of factors including US imperialism’s need to bring Japan out of its economic chaos, the intensification of the cold war and the militant tactics of the labour movement, was not institutionalized until the following year. During the summer of 1948, the government employees, whose wages still lagged far behind those of workers in private industry and farther behind the rising cost of living, again demanded wage increases.


The latter half of 1948 saw the following important revisions: The National Public Service Law of 1947 was amended to outlaw strikes or other dispute tactics and collective bargaining for employees of the regular government service, authorizing jail sentences and fines for violations. The Public Corporations Law set up public corporations for the government railways and for the government’s salt, camphor and tobacco monopolies. Employees of public corporations were given the right of collective bargaining but they were not allowed to strike. Violators would lose employment rights or suffer dismissal.

During the following year, the Labor Relations Adjustment Law was amended so that the power to designate an industry as a ‘public welfare’ industry was transferred from the competent Minister with the concurrence of a majority each of the labor, employer and neutral members of the CLRB to the Prime Minister with the approval of the Diet. This meant that the conservative-dominated government could at will designate some particular section of the economy as a ‘welfare industry,’ thereby forcing the workers involved to accept a thirty day ‘cooling off’ period. The unions were thrown into a state of confusion by the new legal restrictions and the obviously stiffening attitude of SCAP.

Labor was further weakened by the effects of the ‘Dodge Plan,’ an austerity program designed to stop inflation and revive the Japanese economy. Some employers used the program as a weapon against the unions by citing it as they used to cite the war effort, in evidence that labor should be concerned with duty and obedience instead of rights and privileges. It is ironic that SCAP’s austerity program strengthened the very paternalism that their labor legislation was supposed to destroy.

A second and more dangerous effect of the ‘Dodge Plan’ was the utilization of ‘rationalization’ schemes for discharging Communists and other Left-wing labour activists. With SCAP’s encouragement, both the government and private employers used this tactic extensively, often discharging workers on the grounds that they were ‘uncooperative’ or ‘disloyal.’ These methods were successful in purging the trade unions of most of their Left-wing leadership and made it possible for the Mindô (anti-communist and moderate ‘democratization leagues’) to gain control of many of the largest national union federations. Faced with the austerity program, restrictive labor legislation, and the ‘red purge,’ the labor movement began to retreat. Membership declined from around 7,000,000 in 1949 to slightly more than 5,000,000 in 1950. Sanbetsu disintegrated and the reorganization of the trade-union movement began.