Konosuke Matsushita | Born November 27, 1894 (Meiji 27)
A 3-page feature based on public historical records
Sales are falling. Does that mean cutting the workforce?
Unsellable products are filling up the warehouse. Even if production stops, salary payments will not stop. If you were a business owner, where would you start?
At the end of 1929, Matsushita Electric was in the midst of this difficult problem. According to the company's history, sales in November fell by more than half, and executives proposed cutting the number of employees in half. Konosuke Matsushita, who was on his hospital bed, chose a different combination. Cut production in half. Employees will not be fired. Daily wages are paid in full.[3]
The products had stopped selling. Yet the proposed way to cut costs was to dismiss the people who had made them. Should these be treated as the same problem? Konosuke’s choice leaves us with that question.
Konosuke was born in Wakayama in 1894, and went to Osaka for apprenticeship at a young age. In 1918, he founded Matsushita Electric Appliance Manufacturing Company.[1][2] Eleven years have passed since our small start. Because the business grew, one person's decisions were able to affect the lives of many people.
But just a promise to pay your salary won't get you through the winter. What should I do with the half-day I no longer make? That's where the real highlight of this story comes from.
伝Interpreting YAMATO DENSHI
Keeping the workforce—and planning how to make it work.
There is more to this episode than a leader who valued people. A commitment to protect jobs does not, by itself, bring in money. What matters is that Matsushita first decided what to preserve, then changed the allocation of work to support that commitment. The difficulty lay in turning compassion into a practical way to keep the company running.