Cross Currents Home
Search:
Resources | About Us | 日本語サイト
Home Learn About Japan Learn About Japan-U.S. Cross Currents Learn About the U.S.

Two men in suits walking in a crosswalk.
Employment
  1. Group Employment Trips
  2. Spring Employment Season
  3. Hiring New Graduates
  4. Hiring New High School Graduates
  5. The Japanese Employment System
  6. Lifetime Employment
  7. The Seniority Wage System (nenkō joretsu)
  8. The Bonus System
  9. Enterprise Unions in Japan
  10. Enterprise Union Cooperation
  11. Unemployment Insurance
  12. Dual Tracks in Female Occupations: Ippan Shoku (Non-Career Track) and Sōgō Shoku (Career Track)
  13. Increase of Female Employees
  14. Female dominant occupations
  15. Post-Retirement Employment and Social Security
  16. Marriage Retirement and Retirement Ages for Men and Women
  17. Relations between Large and Small Companies
  18. Part-time Female Workers
  19. What Kinds of Work Do People Do in Japan?
  20. Freeter/ Furita: Part-Time Workers in Japan
Listen in English | Japanese Japanese View Article in English | Japanese

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

Download Podcast in English | Japanese
Document | Audio-Video | Chart | Picture | Map