JILAF | Japan International Labour Foundation

JILAF invited a team from Pakistan and Nepal to visit Japan from September 4 to 17.

The team consisted of a total of 10 persons (including one woman): four from the Pakistan Workers’ Federation (PWF), three from the General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT), and three from the Nepal Trade Union Congress Independent (NTUC-I).

Throughout the training, the participants endeavored to engage in the exchange of information in an enthusiastic and lively manner. Both Pakistan and Nepal are politically unstable and unable to compile a medium-to-long-term roadmap for the economic and social development of the country as a whole. Because of this, the interest of the participants focused on Japan’s rapid economic growth in the postwar period. They asked many questions about the roles of the government and labour unions in Japan’s economic development and clearly were desperately searching for “what is necessary to achieve development (like Japan).”

At the Japan Productivity Center, the participants learned that a relationship of trust between labour and management is necessary in order to fairly distribute the profits from productivity improvement. In the RENGO Fukui program, they visited Aisin AW Industries Co., Ltd., whose union is a member of the Federation of All Toyota Workers’ Unions, and learned how labour and management there are cooperating to enhance educational and training schemes for union members (workers).

At the National Association of Labour Banks, the participants were deeply impressed that it had been possible, without any funding from the government, to build a bank with deposits in excess of 10 trillion yen by gathering small funds from labour banks.

At the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, one participant from Pakistan stated, “Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons, but when I return home, I want to tell people about the horror of using nuclear weapons.”