This chapter extends the analysis and the line of argumentation developed for Germany and Britain to two further cases, Japan and the United States. Japan provides an important counterpoint to Germany, for there, too, firm-based training rests on institutional arrangements that ameliorate costly competition among firms and mitigate the collective action problems typically associated with private-sector training. Both German and Japanese employers overcame their collective action problems in the area of training, but they did so in radically different ways: in Germany through the construction of a national system that generates a plentiful supply of workers with portable skills, and in Japan, through plant-based training in the context of stronger internal labor markets. Applying the terms introduced in Chapter 1, we note a broad difference between skill formation regimes based on “collectivism” in the German case and “segmentalism” or “autarky” in the Japanese case.

The other case considered in this chapter, the United States, provides a useful counterpoint to that of the British. In both countries, apprenticeship was a source of conflict between employers and craft unions, and therefore, strongly contested across the class divide. As in Britain, so too in the United States only in rare cases (the construction industry is an example) could an accommodation be reached that stabilized coordination across firms and between organized labor and employers in the area of apprentice training. The U.S. case also shares some similarities with Japan, however.