December 25, 1998

Kiyoshi SASAMORI
General Secretary
Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC-RENGO)

1. The November unemployment rate announced today by the Management and Coordination Agency was the worst in history, with a rate of 4.4% and a total of 2.91 million people unemployed. The rate, which has hovered above 4% since April 1998, worsened by a further 0.1 percentage points as a result of slackening motivation for job-seeking, leading to a fall in the number of employed, resulting in a jump in unemployment. Part of the reason for this was the lack of content of the government's economic policies and employment creation measures announced on November 16.
   As we expressed previously in our commentary on the government's economic stimulus package, we see that the government's measures, including the third supplementary budget passed during the extraordinary Diet session this autumn, have not been appraised favorably as ones which can stimulate the economy and employment.
   We have not yet seen any big decrease in the number of bankruptcies caused by financial institutions' reluctance to lend and attempts to forcibly collect loans, and involuntary unemployment has risen largely compared to the same month one year earlier.
   
   
2. In particular, the effective opening-to-application ratio, which is a leading indicator of the employment situation, fell to 0.47, down 0.01 points from the previous month, posting the worst record since the government began taking such statistics, offering further anxiety about the future.
   Today, the government must immediately implement measures to "achieve as a matter of policy" the creation of "1 million jobs" by the end of FY1999. The government must not merely "wait for the efforts of the business world," not allow fields such as nursing care and welfare, education, housing, disaster prevention, and environmental conservation. Concretely, this would mean a support policy to make concrete and assure the achievement of the "Plan for a Million New Jobs" as proposed jointly by RENGO and Nikkeiren (Japan Federation of Employers' Associations). And the urgent creation of space for broad-ranging discussions and the follow-ups between the leaders of labor, industry, and government are required. Then the sound implementation of concrete policies must be done. In this regard, the government ought to allocate an additional ´700 billion from the general account to employment measures in the FY1999 budget.
   
   
3. The government should strongly discourage firms from carrying out layoffs, and businesses for their part should be fully conscious of their social responsibilities and work harder to ensure employment stability.
   Meanwhile, in order to support the job-seeking activities and ensure the livelihoods of unemployed people, who now face ever longer periods of joblessness, the current Unemployment Insurance Law should be applied in a flexible way, and financial measures should be taken to appropriate funds from the general budget account. In addition, we emphasize once again our demand that support measures for the promotion of employment and for the maintenance of living should be expanded and implemented through the Employment Countermeasures Act.