The book attempts to examine whether trade unions in Japan contributed to raising wages, productivity and firm's performance. In the western world trade unions are often regarded as organizations which prevent firms from performing well. The Japanese case may be different from Europe and North America. The book investigates who in Japan joins trade unions and asks whether there is any difference in the satisfaction level of employees, the wage level, and labour turnover rates between union members and non-union members?
Monograph on labour relations in Japan - covers effect of cultural factors on employment practices, human relations, trade union rights, collective agreements, labour disputes and dispute settlement, strikes and lockouts, violence, etc. Bibliography pp. 241 to 248, references and statistical tables.
Opinions about industrial relations (IR) in Japan are extremely diversified. The main concern regarding IR appears to be whether Japan can maintain the vitality and flexibility to cope with the changes in the industrial structure and technology in a stagnant world economy. The lack of opposition and dispute between labor and management may be the most important feature for summarizing labor-management relations in modern Japan when making international comparisons. Hypotheses for understanding Japanese IR have been postulated in regard to the following: unintended consequences, homogeneous structure, business community of management and labor, global competition and the needs for flexibility, adaptability in competitive markets, and transformation of the paradigm of IR. The historical development of labor relations in Japan shows a spirit of cooperation. By any measurement of cooperation, labor-management cooperation is strongest in Japan. A special feature of the corporate structure is management's role as referee between the employees and the stockholders. Other features include a continuous path of promotion, firm-specific training, built-in wage-profit system, and transit members of unions. A typical system for mutual communication is the "labor-management consultation system." In the future, unions must minimize adverse effects of competition among rival companies, individualization, and fragmentation of IR. (Appendixes include 25 references and a chronological table of IR in Japan.) (YLB)
Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff’s now classic 1984 book What Do Unions Do? stimulated an enormous theoretical and empirical literature on the economic impact of trade unions. Trade unions continue to be a significant feature of many labor markets, particularly in developing countries, and issues of labor market regulations and labor institutions remain critically important to researchers and policy makers. The relations between unions and management can range between cooperation and conflict; unions have powerful offsetting wage and non-wage effects that economists and other social scientists have long debated. Do the benefits of unionism exceed the costs to the economy and society writ large, or do the costs exceed the benefits? The Economics of Trade Unions offers the first comprehensive review, analysis and evaluation of the empirical literature on the microeconomic effects of trade unions using the tools of meta-regression analysis to identify and quantify the economic impact of trade unions, as well as to correct research design faults, the effects of selection bias and model misspecification. This volume makes use of a unique dataset of hundreds of empirical studies and their reported estimates of the microeconomic impact of trade unions. Written by three authors who have been at the forefront of this research field (including the co-author of the original volume, What Do Unions Do?), this book offers an overview of a subject that is of huge importance to scholars of labor economics, industrial and employee relations, and human resource management, as well as those with an interest in meta-analysis.
Conference report on post-1973 labour relations in Japan and Germany, Federal Republic - covers labour market structure, personnel management, trade unions, works councils, technological change, rationalization, labour market segmentation and structural change; notes a trend towards conservatism among workers' organizations, and management initiative in joint consultation. References and list of participants. Conference held in Sendai (Japan) 1982 Sep 27 to Oct 1.
Japanese scholars have begun to challenge conventional wisdom about effective labor organizing, and Ikuo Kume has written the first book in English to advance their controversial theory. Since at least the early 1980s, the power of organized labor has weakened in most advanced industrial countries. The decline of organized labor has coincided with the decentralization of labor-management relations. As a result, most observers assume that decentralized labor is destined to lose power in a capitalist economy, and that enterprise unions will tend to be docile and powerless. Kume documents the one notable exception. The Japanese trade union confederation has steadily grown in importance, expanding its scope beyond individual companies to national policy making. Kume traces the achievements of enterprise unionism in private firms. Labor, he argues, slowly gained legitimate corporate membership by establishing joint institutions with management. By the 1960s, labor-management councils, stimulated by foreign competition, had become a widespread feature of Japanese industry. Soon unions were regular participants in the government deliberation councils and in the information exchange that shaped policy when inflation hit the Japanese economy. The unions had become a full partner by the 1980s and were crucially involved in the 1993 defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party after thirty-eight years of rule.
