Economic Restructuring and Company Unionism the Japanese Model

The paper discusses problems of union involvement in the management of industrial restructuring using the example of Japanese enterprise unions. 'Economic restructuring' implies processes of technical and organizational change at firm level as well as shifts in the sectoral structure of the economy. The aim of the paper is to analyse how far Japanese unions participated in these two types of change and to what degree they were able to implement their goals of maintaining the level of employment and wages and of improving the structure of qualifications. Secondly, the effects of industrial restructuring on the organizational identity of unions are discussed. It is shown that, although union participation in industrial restructuring in Japan was largely confined to informal consultation on lower levels of management, the outcome of industrial restructuring did not violate unions' interests in a spectacular way, thus allowing the unions to keep their decisively positive standpoint on technical and organizational innovation. The paper analyses the structural conditions of the labour market in large Japanese firms and of union organization which underlie that positive attitude towards economic restructuring. Considering the aspect of organizational identity the paper points out that in spite of the relatively favourable condition of the Japanese economy, successes of unions in the field of wages and especially working hours' policies were very limited during the last ten years. Notwithstanding a considerable increase in the level of regular employment during the last ten years the organizational density of Japanese unions declined in relative and even in absolute terms. Thus it seems that the cooperative attitude of Japanese unions in industrial restructuring did not help them to escape the same trend of organizational decline and diminishing ideological appeal which is experienced also by many Western European and US unions.