Japan’s Largest Labor Union Urges Employers to Raise Employee Salaries to Cope with Inflation and Rising Living Costs

Jakarta –

The largest labor union in Japan, Rengo, urged employers to raise employee salaries. This is intended to help workers cope with inflation and rising living costs in Japan.

Launching from Reuters, Friday (21/7/2023), this request was submitted by Rengo after employers agreed to increase the average salary of their employees by up to 3.85% this year. With this increase, workers in Japan can get a salary increase of up to 10,560 yen or around Rp. 1.11 million (exchange rate of Rp. 106/Japanese yen).

The increase in wages is the highest in Japan in the last 30 years. Even so, the workers of Sakura Country feel that this wage increase is still not big enough.

According to them, price inflation that occurred in the past year has made the cost of living expensive. So even though they get a salary increase, the amount is considered not enough to overcome the existing price increases.

“There are some industries that don’t see this wage increase helping substantially and real wages remain under pressure from rising prices,” said President Rengo Tomoko Yoshino.

For this reason, it is planned that the union will hold another meeting to ask employers to increase the wages of their employees in 2024. It is reported that this meeting will take place in October.

That way, at the end of 2023, Rengo can determine the amount of requests for an increase in workers’ wages to employers. It is hoped that these employers will be able to decide on the amount of the increase in employee wages in March 2024.

“It is very important to continue to increase the wage rate (of workers in Japan) and we must continue such efforts (request for wage increase) in our 2024 wage increase offer,” he said.

(hns/hns)

2023-07-21 15:36:33
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