The 2002 Spring Struggle has passed the peak period of March 12 to 15. At this point, major unions in the metals, chemical and textile, food, resource and energy, transportation, and information and publishing industries drew answers regarding their negotiations from their companies. RENGO responded by releasing a statement on March 15 stating, "RENGO appraises the fact that most unions were able to push back managements' demands, preserve wage curves, and even concluded employment maintenance agreements. " Regarding upcoming struggles, "RENGO will furnish information regarding on the amounts equivalent to regular pay raises to keep management from pushing for worsening conditions."

As of March 15, RENGO gravely received the results that were elicited from tense labor/management negotiations at each union. The unions were able to push back management's insistence on freezing/revising regular pay raises and reducing pay scales, while at the same time unions maintained wage curves at most unions and were able to conclude "employment maintenance agreements" or "declarations of employment stabilization." Based on its principles of protecting people's living standards and employment, RENGO recognizes the value of these results as creating the bare minimum conditions necessary to stem a deflationary spiral.

However, it is highly unsatisfactory that many unions demanding gross base increases received a "no-increase" answer. It should be a question of vital importance to fundamental labor-management relations that claims of neglecting the need for base salary increases was steamrolled even in the enterprises where there was clear cooperation from union members and their efforts were apparent. We also want to sharply question managements' social responsibility, which lacks sensitivity toward citizens' issues such as economic recovery and job improvement and remains largely biased toward individual company's managerial logic of how to survive.

The chemical and textile industries, commerce and distribution industries, and small to mid-sized unions are now entering their peak period of negotiations. All the unions will secure at least amounts equivalent to maintain wage curves and at unions which "demand plus alpha," they will further try to accumulate as large a base wage increase as possible. Also during the coming peak period, all unions will do their utmost to conclude "employment maintaining agreements" and/or "declarations of employment stabilization" between labor and management. In conjunction with those efforts, unions will fortify their activities for improved treatment of part time workers, which we have seen some progress at several unions.

RENGO will furnish information on "amounts equivalent to regular pay increases" in order to prevent employers from attempting to argue that no base wage scale increases mean no pay increases at non-unionized companies. In addition, RENGO will spur negotiations through setting a "settlement promotion period."

Further, management in some companies are proposing a "freeze on regular pay raises for a fixed period of time" and "cutting wages for a certain period." Regarding these emergency refuge measures, RENGO should not make comments on individual cases since the said union in question should respond to those moves on their own and under the guidance of their industrial federations. Yet, RENGO considers this as "admitting that they have broken off from original wage negotiations, it is still extremely regrettable when we consider the influence this has on remaining unions that face negotiations from now that these proposals were released without delay after original salary negotiations."