Providence Newspaper Guild - Labor and the Japanese Media

Japanese Media Don't Bash Unions

Then again, they hardly mention unions at all-just as a worsening Japanese economy is straining traditional labor relations

By Tim Schick
Providence Newspaper Guild

After hours with Japanese labor leaders.

Leaders of Shimbun Roren, the Japanese Federation of Newspaper Workers Union .

A Guild-represented reporter for the Providence Journal recently related how the leader of a nurse's union, involved in a bitter strike against a local hospital, had reproached him for not writing a news story that leaned toward the union's version of events.

The complaint that news coverage of the labor movement is biased in favor of management is one I have heard frequently. It also is a perception common among U.S. labor leaders. So when I was invited to represent the Guild as part of a four-member CWA delegation to Japan, I decided to explore the Japanese perception of labor coverage in their own news media.

My findings? During two weeks of interviews with Japanese union, management and government officials I discovered virtual unanimity: there is little bias toward labor in the Japanese media because reporting on labor issues is next to non-existent.

The very structure of Japanese labor relations prevents most labor issues from becoming newsworthy, as each company has its own union, separate and distinct from other unions in the same industry. As a result, the only significant labor coverage, aside from general reporting on the economy, occurs during the annual Shunto-the spring labor offensive-when unions negotiate wage increases.

Of more significance, however, is the fact that most unions have adopted cooperative relationships with their employers, maintaining offices within the employers' buildings and consulting on issues that would be considered management prerogatives in the U.S. Union leadership is a path into management, and leaders of both sides lose face if a contract agreement cannot be reached.

This cooperative approach to workplace relations dates, for all practical purposes, back to the American occupation following World War II. As a result, much of Japan's workplace structure bears a superficial resemblance to the U.S. system, but it serves the needs of Japanese workers, management and society-all of which are considerably different from their American counterparts.

For example, union membership as a percentage of the workforce is much higher in Japan than in the U.S., partly because it's easier to form a union in Japan than in the U.S., but mostly because unions are valued for promoting workplace democracy and consensus building. The U.S. system, on the other hand, is more reflective of the Marxist concept of a struggle between labor and capital for control over the fruits of the workers' labors.

Another factor determining the scope of Japanese labor coverage is the manner in which news is gathered, with reporters congregating at the ministries they cover and reporting on official statements and press releases as they are issued. There is very little, if any, investigative reporting. William "Bud" Clatanoff, U.S. labor attaché in Japan, remarked that Watergate-style reporting simply does not occur in Japan.

Kiyoshi Morikawa, vice president of Shimbun Roren-the Japanese Federation of Newspaper Workers Union is critical of this type of superficial coverage, which he says is made worse by newspapers assigning teams of reporters to gather information that is then rewritten by an editor. The result is that no one has a complete picture or understanding of what is being written about. And without personal bylines there is little incentive to excel, while weak reporting can hide behind the camouflage of anonymity.

(A similar problem is found at smaller U.S. papers, where reporters don't have enough experience to understand the significance of what they are writing about and where high staff turnover has eliminated any institutional memory of past events.)

But the issues faced by Shimbun Roren affiliates are very similar to those faced by newspaper workers in the U.S. And as in the U.S., their bargaining power is significantly less than that of their telecommunications counterparts.

Although Japanese circulation rates are at all-time highs, Morikawa says many observers believe they have peaked and will start to decline-given a push, perhaps, by the persistently ailing economy.

Subscription prices are higher than in the U.S., accounting for 50 percent of a Japanese newspaper's revenue versus the 30 percent that is typical in the U.S.-a disparity that has been accentuated by a loss of advertising revenue caused by the recession. Larger papers therefore have begun aggressive incentives for people to subscribe, going to such lengths that there are even reports of people being offered refrigerators for subscriptions.

My cousin Wayne Dawson, a physicist at the University of Tokyo, reports that newspaper sales agents will show up on his doorstep like aggressive missionaries, determined not to leave until the balking customer has been converted.

Kenji Kasai, Shimbun Roren general secretary, fears such aggressive sales tactics will bankrupt smaller, local papers that can't afford to compete. The incentives also are criticized by union leaders as being of questionable legality because of Japan's pricing laws-which require uniform pricing and prohibit discounting-but the country's publishers are trying to repeal such restrictions, possibly paving the way to predatory pricing and subsequent job losses.

Technological changes already have resulted in some workforce reductions, largely through attrition. But in sharp contrast to the last U.S. recession, in which newspapers slashed jobs, the Japanese response to their ongoing economic downturn has been to reduce bonuses rather than to layoff workers. This is in keeping with Japan's tradition of giving full-time permanent employees "lifetime jobs," but the cost has not been cheap: such bonuses can add up to 40 percent of a worker's annual compensation. Moreover, the English-language Japan Times reports that if companies laid off their surplus workers the unemployment rate would soar above 10 percent.

The irony is that Japanese unemployment in the midst of a recession is the same as it currently is in the U.S., where the economy has been booming. Indeed, while the 4.5 percent unemployment rate is a record high in Japan, in the U.S. it represents a record low.

There are other significant differences between Japanese and American practices. In Japan, for example, there are no incentive or commission programs for advertising sales reps, whereas in the U.S. such plans often comprise a major source of such employees' incomes-with some U.S. newspapers attempting to abolish salaries for sales staffs altogether. In addition, some Japanese papers are experimenting with combining reporting and layout job functions, which is unheard of in the U.S., except at very small weeklies.

But as the persistent recession continues to grind down the Japanese economy, pressure to change the labor relations system to conform more closely with the U.S. model keeps growing. Such a shift would mark a fundamental change in the relationship between workers and their employers-and also could result in a more militant and adversarial labor movement.

Similarly, the telecommunications industry is under pressure to "liberalize"-or deregulate, in American jargon. Japan is about a decade behind the U.S. in eliminating monopolistic practices that are blamed for blocking competitive efficiencies, innovation and lower consumer costs-but which, once gone, also result in de-unionization, wage reductions and job elimination.

Many of the union and company officials we met in Japan were confident this would not happen. But the American experience with layoffs, wage cuts and outsourcing left us worried that the workers and managers in the Japanese telecommunications industry do not understand how cutthroat global competition can become.

Management and union officials at KDD, Japan's international telephone company, seemed to have the best grasp of deregulation's repercussions and acknowledged that their company could be a takeover target for a foreign firm seeking fast entry into the Japa-nese telecommunications market. Japanese law currently protects NTT, the domestic telephone company, from large-scale foreign ownership.