Photo: President Sasamori submits the demands.

At the opening of the government/labor meeting, Sasamori submitted RENGO’s “Demands on the Budget Compilation FY2002” to Prime Minister Koizumi. Sasamori praised Koizumi’s remarks at a summit debate with Democratic Party of Japan leader Hatoyama on November 21 saying, “it is of historic significance that Prime Minister Koizumi referring to RENGO said that he would like to hear the labor’s opinion on employment issues.” He then requested a government/labor summit meeting and the opening of government/labor consultations for democratic reform of the civil servant system. Sasamori continued indicating that results from “employment hot line” consultations and “employment interview surveys” conducted in front of Hello Work (public placement offices), showed that “policies must be changed to those that better consider the demand side’s concerns.” He showed his disappointment in “(the government’s) supplementary budget that fails even as lip service. It is disappointing that the budget is not contiguous if the 2nd supplementary budget is planned.”
Further, he added that “we are currently conducting <Acton Route 47> an action where we ask opinions in each of the 47 prefectures, we have learned that we need policies that pay attention to regional characteristics.”
Regarding the matter of work sharing, Sasamori said “RENGO and NIKKEIREN’s (Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations) ‘Declaration to Promote <Social Consensus on Employment>’ reflects a sense of crisis on both sides. We want the government to take further steps toward a social consensus through government/labor/management. We request that the government take immediate steps such as issuing a declaration of employment emergency.”

Following Sasamori’s appeal, General Secretary Kusano explained RENGO demands which include: (1) earmarking more than ¥2 trillion of the second supplementary budget for FY2001, (2) include employment creating measures for one million people in the FY2002 budget, (3) medical care reform insisting on the idea “three-party loss suffered equally,” (4) stabilization of financial institutions and small to mid-sized business bankruptcy prevention measures, and (5) democratic civil servant system reform with basic labor rights.

Prime Minister Koizumi responded saying “(the government) has already clearly established a 5.3 million job creation measure over five years. (We realize that we) can cooperate with RENGO in a considerable amount of areas. We want to study how the government can best cooperate on work sharing (with RENGO and NIKKEIREN), and whether there are specifically effective methods to implement it. Sasamori hearing this emphasized “we want the government to proceed with public job creation first in its 5.3 million job creation measure.”
Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda stated that “when compiling the second supplementary budget, we will target those projects which will most immediate effect an increase in employment. The issuing of national bonds will continue to be strictly limited to ¥30 trillion. Furthermore, the government will properly handle all finance and small to mid-sized business issues taking RENGO’s points into consideration.”
Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Sakaguchi stated that “this is the first time, to my knowledge, that 55% of the first supplementary budget has been earmarked for employment measures. We tried as best we could to implement even those policies already in effect. We will work on such future measures as: (1) job measures in each of the eight regional blocs nationwide, (2) relief measures for self-employed businesses that decreased by 700-800 thousands people compared to the same month last year.”

After the meeting, a summit meeting was held in the Prime Minister’s office at President Sasamori’s request. There, Koizumi disclosed that the government will actively join discussions among the government, labor and management on work sharing issues. Both Koizumi and Sasamori agreed to inaugurate a forum for discussion in December.