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

Arjan B Keizer

Work, Employment & Society, 2019, vol. 33, issue 2, 226-243

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 non-regular 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; revitalization; unionization; unions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017018759205 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:2:p:226-243

DOI: 10.1177/0950017018759205

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().