Target for Regional Minimum Wage Revision Revealed
24 July 2006
On July 21st, the Central Minimum Wage Council's Subcommittee on Targets, which is composed of representatives from labor, management and academia and other experts (in the public sphere), was convened to discuss a target for revising regional minimum wages for this fiscal year. Members on the labor side said that "in a bid to gain an perceptible minimum wage, (the committee) should come up with target figures in the two-digit range that are based both on current cost of living levels and various wage indexes as well as trends in environmental changes, which must at the very least greatly exceed last year’s." Conversely, employers argued that "it is not appropriate to indicate targets with actual numbers." In this situation where perceptions by labor and management differed greatly, members of the public ranked wage amounts (each prefecture is divided into four ranks) indicating a ¥4 raise in hourly wages for Rank A, which includes Tokyo. (The status for each rank and the subcommittee’s report appear in the reference materials) The Central Minimum Wage Council will submit its report on regional minimum wages to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Management on July 26th and will release targets for revision. Each region will then begin deliberation on regional minimum wages in response to the results with a goal of wrapping up by October 1st.