The Future Vision of the Japanese Automobile Industry and the Direction for the Trade Union Movement

-- Our Immediate Tasks--

Introduction

l         Efforts by the Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers’ Unions (JAW) on Political and Institutional Problems In order that each and every citizen can live and work in safety, the structure of all society surpassing the framework of business and industry must be corrected by the improvement of working conditions such as wages and working hours.  This goes hand in hand with a fair, impartial and clear tax or social security system, stable employment and prices, amongst other things. For resolving these types of political and institutional problems, JAW has been trying to improve the solidification of political advancement through the 16 political symposiums it has held since 1989.  Recently, the 10 areas listed below are those that JAW should subjectively put efforts into.  However, of the items in the list, the ‘Employment and work policies’, ‘Reform of the tax system’ and ‘Social welfare and social security policies’ have been earmarked as the most important areas and efforts are being concentrated here.

Major Classification	Policy Items
Areas of concentration (general policy)	1.      Employment and work policies
	2.      Reform of the tax system	General tax (Excluding automobile related tax)
		Automobile related tax
	3.      Social welfare and social security policies
Automotive Industry Policies	4.      Road and traffic policies
	5.      Environmental and energy policies
Other Policies	6.      General industrial policies
	7.      Economic policies
	8.      Government and economic reform
	9.      Medium and small company policies

l         Efforts toward Political Realization Realizing the policies and institutions that JAW is putting forward is certainly not easy.  Strengthening cooperation with consultants, political consultants and forum representatives, headed by JUTC-Rengo or The Japan Council for Metalworker’ Union (IMF-JC), as well as petitioning related governmental departments or political parties are just some of the efforts needed to be persistently performed for realizing the policies. From now, as JAW, based on this collection of policies, we can actively push our efforts for the political and institutional problem.