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Young Japanese Temporary Workers Create Their Own Unions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Emilie Guyonnet  and
Ludwig Leibenguth
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From the early 2000's onwards, a new kind of trade unionism has been steadily gaining ground in Japan. While the country's major trade unions are stagnating or losing workers, temporary workers, especially young people, have begun to create their own structures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 16 , April 2011 , e4
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2011

References

Notes

1 Source: Department of health, labor and human services, general survey on trade unions, 2009.

2 The security guards work for a private company hired by the city of Yokohama.

3 Source: David-Antoine Malinas, Young workers labor union and the revival of Japanese labor movement, ICJS Wakai Project Youth Conference: Youth work in contemporary Japan, Temple University, Tokyo, 28 June 2009.

4 See Toru Shinoda, “Which Side Are You On? Hakenmura and the Working Poor as a Tipping Point in Japanese Labor Politics”, Japan Focus, 4 April 2009.

5 “Jichikai” are student self-government associations created after World War II. They were the foundation of the postwar student movement, but in the wake of the campus protests of the late 1960s many campuses disbanded their student self-government associations. Jichikai still exist in some universities.

6 Passed in France in 2006, the CPE stirred mass student protests, leading to its revocation. This labor contract required that employees under the age of 26 undergo a two year probationary period, during the course of which employers could end contracts at any time without any justification.

7 The law of April 1st 2004 turned national public universities into autonomous entities and allowed tuition fees to be raised up to 10% above standard fees set by the state.

8 Source: Highlights from education at a glance 2010, OECD 2010.

9 Source: Department of health and labor, workforce statistics, long term. Quoted by David-Antoine Malinas in “Evolution du travail précaire en France et au Japon”, Japon contemporain, 2nd of December 2008.

10 “5,885 temp workers killed or injured at work in 2007: poll”, Japan Today, 21rst of August 2008.

11 See “The New Politics of Labor: Shifting Veto Points and Representing the Unorganized”, Miura Mari, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo, Domestic Politics Project No. 3, July 2001.

12 See The wages of affluence: labor and management in postwar Japan, Andrew Gordon, Harvard University Press, 1998.