TOKYO, Oct. 25, 2021–Since 1946, the year after Japan lost the World War II, Toyota Motor Corp.’s labor unions, now unionizing more than 350,000 workers as the single largest Japanese corporate labor, have been endorsing Democratic-Socialist candidates in parliamentary elections — not the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that the automaker’s management maintains cushy relationship with.
This year, for the first time ever, though, the unions have decided to break ranks with the Democratic Socialists in the run-up to the October 31 parliamentary general election after Shin-ichiro Furumoto, a former House of Representative lawmaker who had been given the lawmaker’s seat with the Toyota worker votes, decided not to run during the current election.
Furumoto joined Toyota fresh off university and had headed the federation of Toyota labor unions for several years, later was elected six time as a House of Representative lawmaker at one time serving as parliamentary vice finance minister when opposition parties governed the Japanese government. The Toyota unions (https://www.kabanet.org/) continued supporting the Democratic Socialists (now named the Constitutional Democratic Party) even after the LDP regained parliamentary majority. In 1949, the unions negotiated Toyota’s wage reduction demand and won an agreement never to discharge workers in exchange for a 10 percent wage cut.
Furumoto, 56, appears to have made the decision to step down in deference to the Toyota unions’ increasingly snug relationship, in lockstep with the company management — particularly CEO Akio Toyoda, with the LDP.
The arms-length distance between the unions and management almost gone, Toyota may be losing a big bloc of stakeholders that have guided the company at its crises and apex. Is it a healthy move or not?
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