Wage Cut Almost Happened... One Non-Regular Worker Achieves '6% Raise' for 5,000 Employees

Non-regular Workers at Japan's ABC Mart
Join Union After 'Wage Cut' Notice
Raise Wages by 6% Through Collective Bargaining

In Japan, the efforts of a single non-regular worker have attracted attention as the wages of about 5,000 workers, which were about to be cut, were increased by an average of 6%.

The protagonist is Mr. A (47), a part-time employee working at a store of the shoe retail chain 'ABC Mart.' After joining the non-regular workers' industrial union alone, Mr. A negotiated wages and collective agreements with the company, resulting in this outcome, reported Tokyo Shimbun and Hankook Ilbo on the 13th.

[Image source=Jonghap Support Union YouTube capture]

At the end of last year, Mr. A was notified by the store manager that his hourly wage, which was 1,030 yen (about 9,450 won), would be reduced by 20 yen to 1,010 yen due to a "change in evaluation criteria." Mr. A, who had ranked 6th or 7th among the approximately 5,000 part-time employees nationwide, could not accept this notification. Since he spent all his wages on his parents' nursing care and living expenses, the impact of the wage cut was even greater.

However, since ABC Mart had no union, Mr. A could not think of an appropriate way to respond to the wage cut. Then, after hearing from a labor inspector that "there is a union that non-regular workers can join alone," he found and joined the Tokyo-based non-regular workers' union, 'Sogo Support Union.'

Every spring in Japan, a large-scale wage negotiation campaign called Chuntu is held between management and unions. This year’s Chuntu was characterized by members of 16 non-regular workers' unions nationwide coming together to demand a "10% wage increase for all non-regular workers" in a campaign called the 'Non-regular Workers’ Chuntu.'

Mr. A also actively participated in the Non-regular Workers’ Chuntu through his union, including holding street protests in front of ABC Mart stores. As his actions quickly spread through social networking services (SNS), the company eventually announced that it would "withdraw the wage cut for Mr. A."

However, Mr. A continued a partial strike by leaving work 15 minutes early alone, persistently demanding that "wage cuts for other colleagues also be withdrawn." Subsequently, a part-time leader from another store joined the union, and the two of them, supported by the Sogo Support Union, engaged in collective bargaining with the company.

Ultimately, after three rounds of negotiations, they achieved a result of raising wages by an average of 6% for about 5,000 non-regular employees. Mr. A’s hourly wage even increased by 60 yen to 1,090 yen. Yuki Endo of the Hama Bank Research Institute, an expert in wage matters, explained to Tokyo Shimbun, "The bargaining power was strengthened because non-regular workers united beyond the framework of company-specific unions."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.