ASIA : JAL Attendants’ Wages Hit Turbulence in Japan

A Japan Air Lines’ plan to start hiring contract flight attendants at half the pay of full-status employees has stirred a new controversy here over government intervention in private business.

The battle--unusual only in that it has gone public--is not over yet.

But signs are pointing to a victory for business.

It started in August, just as JAL was about to interview applicants for jobs as contract flight attendants. Transportation Minister Shizuka Kamei lashed out at JAL and its president, condemning them for ignoring concerns of safety.

Asserting that flight attendants earning only half as much as other crew members would not be able to unite in teamwork needed in case of an emergency, he ordered JAL to drop the plan. If it didn’t, applications for additional flights would be rejected.

Aware that JAL was acting as a Trojan horse for Japan’s two other airlines, which also are operating in the red, Kamei made his threat applicable to any airline employing what he called “part-timers.”

Part-time in Japanese usage means contract workers who work a full-time schedule. At JAL, they would differ from full-status employees only in their pay and in their one-year contracts, renewable for a maximum of three years.

Starting pay would be about $20,000 a year, compared to twice that for full-timers.

Even so, 2,500 women applied for the first 100 part-time jobs--apparently because of the glamour attached to flight attendant’s work and an increasingly tough labor market, especially for women.

To JAL, which had already won approval of Transportation Ministry bureaucrats, Kamei’s move came as a bolt of lightning. But JAL meekly announced that it would withdraw its plan.

Far from fading away, though, the dispute exploded into what the mass media here have dubbed the “turtle-crane war.” The first character in Kamei’s name means turtle ; the crane is JAL’s corporate symbol.

Takeshi Nagano, president of Nikkeiren (Japan Federation of Employers Assns.), attacked Kamei for blatant interference in private business. Kamei, in turn, condemned Nagano for siding with the equivalent of 19th-Century robber barons who seek profit at the expense of all human considerations.

Mass media jumped on the furor, mostly siding with JAL.

The media consensus was that JAL wages are indeed too high, even when compared to other Japanese, who earn an average of about $55,000 a year.

JAL officials said annual income of an average 31-year-old employee amounts to $80,000 and claimed that sum is about double what U.S. airlines pay their cabin crew.

Susumu Makino, vice president of the independent Japan Air Lines Cabin Attendants Union, said wages are higher than average because cabin crew jobs involve specialized skills. But he said wages average only $66,000 a year.

The company’s problems come from managerial mishaps, not high wages, he insisted.

Arthur J. Alexander, of the Japan Economic Institute in Washington, agreed. In a Sept. 2 report issued by the Japanese government-supported institute, he called JAL “one of the most inefficient carriers” in the world.

Makino’s union strongly opposes JAL’s part-timer scheme. But with only 1,600 members, its voice is drowned out. The 13,000-member Zenro (All Japan Air Lines Labor Union), set up by JAL, isn’t complaining.

“JAL is our workplace. In normal circumstances, we think full-time employees should be hired, but the company has suffered red ink for three straight years. We have been told that even our own jobs are becoming threatened,” Zenro representative Hideo Kato said.