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The Development and Structure of Japanese Enterprise Unions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

John Benson
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The major reason for writing a paper on Japanese unionism is that much of the debate assessing Japanese enterprise unions was set in the pre-1990s period when the economy was strong and there was a shortage of skilled labour. Thus, whilst some commentators argued that Japanese enterprise unions were little more than an arm of management, it was difficult to refute the argument that this form of unionism had resulted in real wage and benefit increases for a considerable period of time whilst generally ensuring a high level of job security for large numbers of workers. Over the past 15 years or so a different economic context has arisen where wage gains have been harder for unions to achieve, where unemployment and irregular employment have increased, and where globalization has made the market for Japanese goods highly competitive. It is time to provide a more contemporary assessment of this form of union organization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 11 , November 2008 , e3
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2008

References

Notes

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