Role of Labor Unions in the Recent Change in White-collar HRM Practices in Japan
Motohiro Morishima
http://www.jil.go.jp/bulletin/year/1999/vol38-12/05.htm
We might have expected these HRM changes to provide a new impetus for labor union activities and for discussion over employment conditions to become a focus of labor-management conflicts again. We might also have expected dwindling union membership (Tsuru, 1994) and decreasing commitment to labor movement activities (Fujimura, 1998) to be reversed.
However, this does not seem to be happening. Instead, enterprise unions in Japan have taken a collaborative position in the introduction of new white-collar HRM practices. As will be shown, unions are often consulted in the process, but their participation does not seem to have a strong impact on employers. In this sense, the position taken by Japanese enterprise unions is consistent with past patterns of labor-management relations in large Japanese firms. The traditional ways of labor-management cooperation are carefully being followed, both to protect the interests of union members and to meet the competitive challenges faced by their employers.
