Sep. 5, 01:13 EDT Japan faces massive auto job cuts: union

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's auto industry could lose 143,000 jobs over the next four years, according to a recent labour union report that indicates the country's unemployment woes could worsen.

The bulk of the losses would come in the auto-parts industry, which could see 119,900 positions eliminated by 2005 under a worst-case scenario, says the study by the Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers' Unions.

Reasons for the workforce reductions include a worsening global auto market, tougher international competition and the growing number of Japanese manufacturers moving production overseas, confederation spokesman Keiya Tanaka said today.

The report also cited foreign ownership of Japanese auto firms as a reason for job cuts.

France-based Renault, which has a 37 per cent stake in Nissan, has said it will slash 21,000 jobs at its Japanese subsidiary. Mitsubishi Motors, 37 per cent owned by Germany's DaimlerChrysler AG, is also planning to shed 9,500 jobs, or 14 per cent of its global workforce.

But Tanaka said the union's simulation did not take such cuts into consideration.

The confederation hired Japan's Mitsubishi Research Institute to conduct the study as a basis for managing labour relations with employers.

The figures come a week after Japan announced its jobless rate had risen to five per cent, its highest level since the government began taking such statistics in 1953. On Tuesday, the government said the rate would be double that if figures included people who have given up looking for work.

A further slump in the auto industry, which helped drive Japan's postwar economic boom, would mirror the hardships faced in the country's other manufacturing sectors and extend the country's economic woes.

Electronics maker Hitachi, for example, said Friday it was slashing 14,700 jobs, or 4.3 per cent of its workforce. That move followed similar announcements by rivals Toshiba Corp., NEC Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd.

Accustomed to stable growth and lifetime employment, Japan has never had to provide for a mobile work force or encourage managerial innovation. Those traditions are being undermined by a decade-long slump.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 05, 2001

Answers

A 5% unemployment rate in Japan is like a 10% unemployment rate in the U.S. With the Japanese social policy of giving engineers a broom to sweep up, to keep them busy when there is nothing else to do, unemployment at almost any level is almost unheard of.

Bad, bad sign!

-- Wellesley (wellesley@freeport.net), September 05, 2001.