Inclusion of ‘Outsiders’ by Japanese Unions? The Organizing of Non-Regular Workers in Retail

Abstract

A strong rise in non-regular employment has posed a major challenge to Japanese trade unions which have long limited membership to regular employees. However, a number of mainstream unions in the retail industry have responded by organizing non-regular workers. The article draws on a series of semi-structured interviews with union representatives to analyse the initiatives by the industrial federation UA Zensen and three affiliated enterprise unions. It addresses the implications for both the workers and the unions concerned. Unions have provided a stronger voice to nonregular workers and negotiated better working conditions. However, it has not brought material equality with regular workers or major changes to Japanese unionism. Instead, the enterprise-based and cooperative nature of unionism has shaped the initiatives and reproduced traditional equilibria and processes between labour and management, thus constraining the ability of unions to develop a strong stance for the emancipation of non-regular workers.Keywords: dualism, inclusion, Japan, non-regular, organizing, part-time, revitalisation, unionization, unions Corresponding author details:Arjan Keizer, Alliance Manchester Business School, Booth Street East, Manchester, M15 6PB, UK.Email: arjan.keizer@mbs.ac.uk IntroductionThe strong rise in non-regular and often precarious employment has posed major challenges to trade unions across developed economies (e.g. Gumbrell-McCormick, 2011;Hyman, 1997; Keune, 2013). They are increasingly trying to represent these workers but former strategies of exclusion and the inherent characteristics of much non-regular work has hindered progress. This challenge also holds for Japan where inclusion is often restricted by the prevalence of enterprise unions and their exclusive commitment to regular workers (seishain) as members of the firm 'community' (Jeong and Aguilera, 2008;Urano and Stewart, 2007;Weathers, 2010). Japanese unions have therefore been argued to contribute to the existing labour market dualism rather than to its solution (e.g. Broadbent, 2008;Stewart, 2006;Urano and Stewart, 2009).The challenge has become particularly pressing because of the very strong rise in nonregular (part-time, temporary, agency) employment (hiseiki koyō) in Japan to over one-third of total employment (JILPT, 2016). It has contributed to a historically low unionization rate of 17.3 per cent in 2016 (Survey on Trade Unions Structure) and pushed unions to reconsider their former strategy of exclusion. Moreover, it has raised concerns about the rise in 'working poor' (wākingu puā) and social inequality (kakusa shakai) (e.g. Imai, 2011;Weathers, 2010; Yun, 2010). A limited number of mainstream unions have responded by recruiting and representing non-regular workers and this article analyses the strategies by the industrial union UA Zensen -the most successful federation in this respect -and three of its affiliated enterprise unions at major retail firms. The article will qualify these strategies as 'organizing' but uses this t...

Lopsided inclusion: The impact of multi‐employer bargaining and class‐based unionism on non‐regular employment in South Korea

“…Therefore, past research is predicated on the assumption that bargaining arrangements inclusive of non‐regular workers would be more often used by unions with a class‐based identity (Carver & Doellgast, 2021). Some previous studies have documented cases where unions with a business‐unionism orientation also launched solidaristic initiatives (Fleckenstein & Lee, 2019; Gasparri, Ikeler & Fullin, 2019; Keizer, 2019). The spread of multi‐employer bargaining may also be driven by employers and the state if they desire to deal with moderate unions and control workplace militancy (Jeong & Aguilera, 2008; Paster et al., 2020).…”