The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) faces a crisis this spring. Management has suggested that there may be decreases in basic wages and that annual spring labor campaigns for higher wages are dead.

"If we are going to conduct labor campaigns seriously," Rengo Chairman Kiyoshi Sasamori told a New Year's get-together in Tokyo on Jan. 5, "we will have to prepare for arrests." Rengo is the nation's largest labor organization.

After being re-elected chairman in October, Sasamori declared he would do his utmost to reconstruct Rengo. The ratio of union members to the total number of workers has dipped to 19.6 percent, the worst in the postwar era.