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Wide angle photo looking up to the top of a tall building.
Workplaces
  1. The Work Group
  2. Office Arrangements
  3. Office Ladies (OL)
  4. Enterprise Unions in Japan
  5. Enterprise Union Cooperation
  6. Strikes Japanese-Style
  7. Sexual Harassment
  8. Separate Surnames for Married Couples
  9. “Mighty” Women: Police and the Military Self Defense Force
  10. Ama (Female Diver)
  11. Who Farms in Japanese Farm Households?
  12. San-Chan Nōgyō
  13. The Changing Income of Farm Households
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The number of workers in Japan has increased, but the rate of unionization in Japan has declined.
Photo from Mainichi Shimbun.
Enterprise Union Cooperation
The Dōmei labor federation promoted labor-management cooperation and workers’ participation in management. These unions believed that by working with management to increase productivity, both the company and the workers could prosper together. This view became predominant in Japanese enterprise unions during the high growth era of the 1960s and 1970s. After the “Oil Shock” of 1973, workers in enterprise unions in large companies worked closely with management to make the production process more efficient, in exchange for long-term job security and good wages and benefits. Increasingly, white collar workers and supervisors made up the unionized labor force in these companies. Traditional “blue-collar” or manual labor jobs were filled by non-unionized contract workers and workers in subcontracting firms. As a result, the percentage of workers in unions has decreased even though the total number of workers has remained fairly stable. Click on CHARTS, below, for more about unionized companies in Japan.
Special Terms: enterprise union  |  Oil Shock  |  job security  |  contract

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