Challenges of trade union in Japanese automobile sector in the liberalized economy

Trade unions across the world are facing the challenges of decrease in density, affirmative HR policy by the management to establish direct contract with the workers, reducing employment size of regular workers, and the threat of outsourcing. On the other hand the trade union leaders have failed to identify themselves as a strategic partner in the business leading the avoidance attitude of management considering them as a hindrance to business. The workers also now know that they are knowledge workers and capable of self-management. The government keep trying to deregulate the labour law in order to facilitate the business. Against this backdrop this study was conducted among the trade union leaders of two large scale automobile manufacturing organizations in Japan and also covers the response of the Japanese Automobile Workers Union. The focus group qualitative data was transcribed by using transcriberpro and coded by following a thematic coding method and analyzed by using Atlas.ti. Trade unions were found to face the challenges of maintaining the ratio between regular and non-regular employment, catering to the disparity between regular and non-regular employees, retaining the entrusted workers, retaining the indirect workers, transfer of productivity and hitting the bar of productivity. This study also explores the attitude of the union leaders towards management as well as towards the non-regular employees. The paper has implications for not only the policy makers of Japan but also all the management and trade unions of all developed nations to shape their future. While the industrial relations climate has facilitated the union-management co-operation moderated by the closed shop unionism, the modern unions also found to face the threat of shifting the production to other developing country. Unions are also compelled by the economic environment to cooperate in terms of productivity and robotization but fear to hit the productivity bar