Trade unions in Japan: Collective justice or managerial compliance

Since the 1950s Japanese trade unions have been predominantly enterprise based with union federations uniting workers at the industry and national levels. This enterprise focus has led to claims that Japanese trade unions are little more than company unionism or a third arm of management (Cole 1971; Galenson and Odaka 1976; Tokunaga 1983; Kawanishi 1992; Matsuzaki 1992). For these critics enterprise unions lack the independence from management and the industrial power necessary to represent workers adequately and to achieve the gains made by occupational and industrial unions.