Kaoru à Âta (; 1 January 1912 – 14 September 1998) was a Japanese trade union leader. He served as chairman of the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sà Âhyà Â) from 1958 to 1966. Known for his cheerful demeanor and energetic activism, à Âta's many forceful statements in defense of the Japanese workers were affectionately known as the "à Âta Trumpet" (à Âta rappa).
Born in Hayashida village, Okayama prefecture (present-day Tsuyama city), Ã Âta graduated from the Department of Applied Chemistry of Osaka Imperial University. In 1938 he joined the Ube Nitrogen Company, where he rose to become chief of the Sulfuric Acid Section by the end of World War II.
In 1946, à Âta was elected president of the company labor union. In 1950, à Âta helped establish the Japanese Federation of Synthetic Chemistry Workers' Unions (Gà Âka Rà Âren) as an affiliate of Sà Âhyà Â, and would remain chairman of its central committee until 1979. In 1953, à Âta was elected chairman of Gà Âka Rà Âren, serving in that capacity until 1957. Within Sà Âhyà Â, à Âta voiced his disagreement with secretary-general Minoru Takano over Takano's "Peace Force Thesis," whereby Takano sought to align Sà Âhyà  with the "peaceful" Soviet Union and Communist China against the "warlike" United States. The following year, three of Sà Âhyà Â's largest unions bolted to form the more moderate, openly anti-communist Zenrà  labor federation, precipitating the ouster of Takano. In 1955, Akira Iwai was elected Sà Âhyà  secretary-general, and à Âta was elected as the vice chairman, with a mandate to pursue a more moderate policy line. In 1958, the à Âta was elected chairman with Iwai remaining in his post as secretary-general.
As leader of Sà Âhyà Â, à Âta adhered to TakanoâÂÂs vision of a wide-ranging political activism, but sought to steer clear of the increasingly unpopular Japan Communist Party and more directly address workers' immediate economic concerns. à Âta and Iwai established a policy line known as the "à Âta-Iwai Line," which sought to balance wage struggles with political struggles. To this end, à Âta promoted the idea annual, scheduled, nationwide strikes known as shuntà  ("spring wage offensives"), which he had first proposed in 1954. The shuntà  was a response to the structural weakness of the Japanese labor movement; rather than organizing by industry, Japanese labor unions were "enterprise unions" organized on a company-by-company basis. This made any particular union reluctant to strike for higher wages and better working conditions, for fear that rival companies would simply snap up market share during the stoppage. à Âta's innovation was to schedule a specific date in the spring when all Sà Âhyà  unions everywhere would agree to go on strike all at once. Since the shuntà  was scheduled in advance, labor and management had ample time to work out a deal, and over time the shuntà  became more of a ceremonial affair where workers would briefly go on "strike" for a day before returning to work, having already secured wage increases in advance. By ameliorating labor strife and avoiding economic uncertainty, this system suited both workers and employers, and rapidly spread throughout Japan. By the 1960s, shuntà  was regularly securing workers large annual wage increases, in line with or even exceeding Japan's high-speed economic growth.
à Âta presided over the Japanese labor movement at the height of its postwar power, demonstrating Sà Âhyà Â's organizational strength by carrying out some of the largest strikes in Japan's history in support of the 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. The largest of these, a nationwide strike organized by on June 15 of that year involved walkouts by more than 6.4 million workers. At the same time, à Âta was also overseeing Sà Âhyà Â's efforts on behalf of one of its member unions in the massive 1960 Mitsui Miike Coal Mine Strike, which ultimately grew to become the largest militant conflict between management and labor in Japan's modern history.
Unfortunately for à Âta and Sà Âhyà Â, both the Anpo and Miike struggles came to be viewed as defeats for the labor movement, as the Anpo protests failed to stop passage of a revised security treaty, and the Miike miners' union was broken when Mitsui corporation succeeded in hiving off a more pliable "second union" and reopening the mine. After these perceived failures, à Âta sought to further moderate Sà Âhyà Â's renowned militancy, shying away from political protests and focusing more on bread-and-butter issues such as securing piecemeal workplace improvements and wage increases, negotiated amicably with employers in advance of the annual shuntà  spring wage offensive.
Public-sector unions, however, did not benefit as much from these efforts, and saw their wages falling behind private-sector counterparts. These workers remained extremely militant, and pressured à Âta to take more forceful actions vis-a-vis their government employers. When Sà Âhyà Â's public-sector unions threatened to go on strike in 1964, in defiance of a law banning public-sector workers from striking, à Âta met with Prime Minister of Japan Ikeda Hayato, and successfully negotiated an annual increase in public sector wages that would match pay in the private sector, in exchange for a promise to further reduce labor militancy. That same year, à Âta was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.
He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution. As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
à Âta stepped down as Sà Âhyà  chairman in 1966, but continued to work as an advisor to Sà Âhyà Â, and remained active in the labor movement. In 1979, he stepped down from his positions in Gà Âka Rà Âren to mount a bid for the governorship of Tokyo, but was defeated. In the early 1980s, he served on the Central Labor Relations Commission.