The Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations

Abstract

Today nearly 34 per cent of all employed persons in Japan are organized. However, the organization rate is uneven in different industries and sizes of enterprise (see Table XXII). Among the different industries the organization rate is lowest in the wholesale and retail trades where small stores predominate and highest in the Government service, which is very characteristic of Japanese industrial relations. The unions in the public sector used to be very politically motivated and worked for radical campaigns such as the campaign against the U.S. ‘imperialist’ foreign policy. Including the public sector, most of the industries with a high percentage rate of organization, such as finance, insurance, transportation, communications and electricity and gas supply, are dominated by larger enterprises whose employees are predominantly white-collar. Table XXIII shows that the majority of organized labour works in enterprises with 1,000 or more employees, while those working in smaller enterprises with less than 100 employees make up a definite minority. Table XXIV shows that the organization rate in larger enterprises with more than 500 employees is more than 60 per cent, while in enterprises with less than 30 employees it is only 3.4 per cent.