Japanese Labor Unions
After the Japanese economic boom of the 1970s, many American companiesimitated many Japanese management methods, often in ways that challengedunion control. The idea developed that the Japanese did not have laborunions in the way American companies do. Actually, Japanese labor unionsdo exist and have an important role in the industrial life of the country,though the nature of these unions may differ from what is found in the Actually, Japan has more than 65,000 labor unions, but only one-fifthof the labor force belongs to a union. Most of these unions are organizednot as addressing an industry-wide job specialty as would be true inAmerica but as enterprise unions whose membership is restricted to regular,full-time employees working in a single company and its affiliates. Theseunions are embedded in larger organizations: An individual company's enterprise union generally belongs to an industry-wide union federation, one example being Un'yu Roren (All Japan Federation of Transport Workers' Unions), and that federation in turn usually belongs to a national, cross-industry labor federation. The largest of these is Rengo (Japanes
Japanese labor unions have more politicalpower than might be expected, but they do not use it as effectively as theymight to gain benefits for the workers. Traditional skilled labor was eventually replaced by internally trained youngsters recruited from schools, and the master-apprentice relations that organized skilled workers along craft lines within large firms were dissolved. Minkan Rengo and variouspublic-sector labor organizations merged in 1989 to form Rengo, "a unifiednational organization embracing 78 industrial unions and about 7. Both white- and blue-collar workers join the union automatically in most major companies. Third was the Federation of Independent Labor Unions (Churitsu Roren), with1. Social security for Japan's elderly comes through saving and working. Craft unions did flourish during the 1920s and 1930s, but they were laterreplaced by the Sampo (the Industrial Patriotic Labor Association) movement(1939-45), which was "a patriotic movement orchestrated by the militarygovernment to elicit workers' cooperation with management and to supportthe war through production" (Cheng 1240). e Trade Union Confederation). This group joined with Sodomei (Japanese Federationof Trade Unions) and Zenkankoro (a public-sector labor union) to form theDomei Kaigi (Congress of Japanese Confederation of Labor), and in 1964 thisunion became Domei (Japanese Confederation of Labor). The movement has still not advanced in American terms much beyond what wasreported in 1988, which is more understandable given the downturn in theJapanese economy in the 1990s. This actually shows a decline given that union membership stood at 35percent in 1975, with one reason given for the decline being "a fall-off inthe percentage of workers in manufacturing and other industries that tendto be highly unionized, and, in part, to an increasing number of youngemployees who prefer to abstain from union membership" ("Japan FactSheet"). Nearly 14 percent of all Japanese workers needed an hour or more to commute to and from work, compared to only 6 percent in the United States. 4million members, including a substantial percentage representing publicsector employees. 8 millionworkers" ("Rengo's Tenth Anniversary and Japanese Labor Unions").
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