Future of Trade Unions in Japan

Introduction: Although relatively stable throughout the 1950s and 1960s, union membership began to decline in Japan in the 1970s and that decline accelerated in the 1980s. A debate regarding the long term viability of the Japanese labor movement has been underway for a least a decade. Initially, attention focused on the changes in the economic, political and social structure of Japanese society - factors that are outside of the control of any participant in the labor relations system. Unlike Western nations such as the United States and Britain, Japan's labor unions have not attracted the substantial increase in employer hostility that characterizes labor - management relationships in the United States and Britain.

According to an essay written by Sadahiko Inoue published on the International Institute for Labor Studies website, The Japanese trade union movement was unified in 1989 when Rengo (the Japanese Trade Union Confederation) was formed as a national center of trade unions representing the overwhelming majority of unionized workers. Rengo has been seeking to promote a flexible trade union movement which still draws on the traditions and historical evolution of Japanese trade unionism until the 1980s. In the course of social and political developments during the 1990s, it can be said that trade unions have become more influential than in the past. Several unions have been tackling the issue of part-time and temporary workers, but they have been generally u

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