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The Charm of the Company Union
In order to help industry produce inexpensively and expand quickly, workers long had to accept low wages. In return, they received an implied guarantee of lifetime jobs in the companies that they joined fresh out of school. That security has bred one of the world's most contented work forces. Japanese workers rarely strike, and absenteeism is almost unknown. Unions lately have become more vocal. Wages climbed an average 18% last year—but, incredibly, productivity rose 14%. Japan's average wages, now 94¢ an hour, passed Italy's in 1969 and France's last year.
One reason that productivity is soaring is that unions have not resisted new technology. If a man's skill becomes obsolete, his company retrains him for something else, with no loss in pay. Employers thus have great freedom to shift workers from one job to another and can invest huge sums to train them without worrying that they will jump to competing firms. As a result, workers tend to identify with the company rather than with a particular skill, a fact that is reflected in union organization. Says Morita, smiling: "Our labor situation is better than yours, because in the U.S. your unions are independent. In Japan, all our unions are company unions."
For both worker and executive, the company is the center of life. Workers often display a quaint family spirit, referring to "my" company, and my is written with the same Japanese character that represents family. They often cheer each other when changing shifts, like baseball players applauding a teammate who has just hit a home run. It is rare for a major executive to leave on a business trip without getting a rousing send-off from the entire office staff at the airport. At Matsushita Electric, Nissan Motors and other firms, the day begins with everybody assembling to sing the company song. At Toyota the day opens with five minutes of supervised calisthenics. There is a vast range of fringe benefits: discount meals at plant cafeterias, cut-rate vacations at company resorts, cheap rental in company apartment houses (roughly $10.80 a month for a two-room flat in one Nippon Kokan building in Yokohama).
The head of a Japanese company is bowed and scraped to by gaggles of company-smocked office girls, drivers and flunkies. The company-paid geisha party for executives is still common, though some newer firms are getting away from it. Almost always, the businessman's wife must accept a new form of concubine: the company. In a recent survey, 68% of the Japanese managers polled said that business was more important to them than their families.
Banzai for Swapping
The executive spends much time talking with officials of other companies, because the tradition of cooperative effort has resulted in a clubby Japanese-industry organization. The prewar zaibatsu cartels of Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo were broken up under the U.S. occupation and supposedly have come together again only loosely. But presidents of the 27