The Japanese Electrical, Electronic & Information Union said Thursday that its member unions will request a pay scale hike of at least ¥17,000 ($109) per month in the 2025 shuntō spring wage negotiations.
Amid rising prices, the umbrella group for labor unions in the electronics industry aims to realize a significant increase through the industry’s biggest pay scale hike request yet.
“We will demand more than in the previous year to fulfill our role as a leading industry in Japan,” Masashi Jinbo, head of the group, told a news conference.
The group is expected to formally adopt the uniform request at its central committee meeting Thursday afternoon.
In last year’s shuntō, the group sought a pay scale hike of at least ¥13,000, the biggest amount since the current system of requests was introduced in 1998.
This year’s request takes into account a fall in real wages and major manufacturers’ strong earnings thanks to expanding demand linked to digitalization.
In shuntō, the industry customarily engages in unified negotiations in which member unions at major companies make the same request and adopt the same schedule of negotiations.
Unions hope that pay hike agreements at such large businesses help create a momentum for increases at smaller makers. In last year’s shuntō, major companies such as Hitachi and Toshiba fully accepted the wage hike requests from their unions.
