Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

This article attempts to compare and contrast some key elements of Japanese labor relations with aspects of two Western systems, the United States and Great Britain. In particular, the article looks at some of the cultural differences between the three countries and examines how each country deals with conflict in labor-management relations. Japan has long been perceived to be "different" and unique among industrial nations, and her labor-management relations have been a subject of fascination for Western onlookers. As one writer put it:

Workers are prompt, efficient, rarely absent and highly productive. They work longer hours and take shorter vacations than their Western counterparts. During inclement weather or transportation strikes, they bed down in their offices or plants, rather than taking advantage of the confusion to stay at home. They sing company songs, and rarely complain when they are replaced by new labor-saving technology.

Japan's peculiarities often are attributed to her penchant for harmony over conflict and group effort over individuality. Tadashi Hanami, a renowned Japanese scholar, has claimed that Japanese labor relations are based on "the existence of an emotional, perhaps sentimental, relationship between employer and employee within the enterprise."

The United States, by way of contrast, emphasizes individuality and competition. "It is therefore ironic that Japan and the United States have shared much (but by no means all) of the same labor law framework since the conclusion of World War 11."I A comparison should prove interesting for this reason alone.

The pattern of labor law in the United Kingdom4 has been very different from that in Japan and the United States. Although the birthplace of the industrial revolution was obviously the first country to require some concept of industrial relations, labor law only recently has come to be recognized as distinct from contract law in general.

Lifetime employment, seniority-based wages and promotion, and enterprise unionism make the corporate enterprise the organizing principle in Japanese industrial relations.5 Union organization, collective bargaining and dispute settlement all exist at the enterprise level in Japan. In the United States, by contrast, unions are organized at the craft or industrial level, with little union authority vested at the enterprise level. In Britain, the situation is different again; unions may be organized at the national level, as in the United States, but general unions are more common than craft or industrial divisions. Unions may be general and open to many categories of workers, or they may be very job-specific. Moreover, bargaining takes place at a multiplicity of levels: at national, enterprise, or even workshop level. In both the United States and Britain, wage structures relate to the job being performed. In contrast, wage structures in Japan are related to the age and tenure of the worker performing it.

The discussion will first consider the background of and philosophies behind labor regulation in each country and then proceed to examine the form of unionism, its origin and relation to company structure, wages and seniority systems, and the effects of one form of unionism rather than another. Next the areas of collective bargaining and industrial action will be explored, followed by a discussion of third party dispute settlement. Finally, an attempt will be made to draw some conclusions about the prospects for labor relations in the future in each of the three nations.

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