The Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers’ Unions will look beyond inflation-linked wage demands in next year’s spring talks, its president told Reuters on Monday, raising the bar after this year’s 4.81 percent average increase.
The Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers’ Unions will look beyond wage demands aimed merely at keeping pace with inflation in next year’s spring wage talks, its president, Akihiro Kaneko, told Reuters in an interview on Monday. “We are discussing raising the bar compared with previous years” for the 2027 talks, Kaneko said, pointing to the need to secure skilled workers as the industry competes with the challenge from China.
The confederation, known as JAW, has 12 unions under its umbrella representing 780,000 workers, including employees of Toyota Motor, Honda Motor and parts makers. Its member unions secured an average monthly wage increase of 4.81 percent in this year’s talks, including base-pay rises of 3.58 percent. Japan’s automobile industry is broadly responsible for employment of 5.5 million people and typically sets the tone for wage negotiations across the economy.
The backdrop is a Japanese inflation picture that has cooled from last year’s pace: core consumer inflation averaged 3.1 percent last year and accelerated to 2.1 percent in September, topping the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent target for the first time in nine months. JAW’s parent group, Rengo, unveiled a policy last week for next year’s talks setting a target centred at a pay rise of 6 percent while maintaining a minimum benchmark of 5 percent or more.
The interview is a Reuters report carried by syndication outlets, and no second independent newsroom’s verification of it was found in this pass. One distinction matters: no specific 2027 demand figure from JAW itself was announced in the interview, only the direction of travel. Rengo’s 6 percent centred target is the parent group’s separate policy, not JAW’s demand, and the two should not be conflated.
Because automobile settlements typically set the tone for the wider Japanese wage round, the 2027 spring talks will be watched as a signal for pay across the economy, and for how far wage growth can run ahead of inflation after a year in which it already did.