This year's season for annual wage negotiations has started as Mr. Hiromasa Yonekura, head of the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren), Japan's most influential business lobby, and Mr. Nobuaki Koga, head of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), Japan's largest labor organization, met Tuesday.
Since the Abe administration announced a joint accord with the Bank of Japan, under which the central bank will set an inflation target of 2 percent and strive to achieve it, stock prices have gone up and the exchange value of the Japanese yen has tended to depreciate. But the government policy could end up seeing price rises without increases in workers' wages.
Management should not forget that if it is too timid about raising wages, the Japanese economy overall might deteriorate.