Watanabe, H. orcid.org/0000-0002-8377-0195 (2021) The political agency and social movements of Japanese individually-affiliated unions. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 42 (3). pp. 531-551. ISSN 0143-831X
Abstract
In contrast to dominant enterprise unions, individually-affiliated unions in Japan such as community and general unions are eager to ameliorate the precarious working conditions of non-regular workers and regular workers in small- and medium-size enterprises. While these unions have assisted workers in resolving labour disputes in similar ways despite their small power resources, they have been different in terms of effectiveness in impacting public policy and improving working conditions of those workers. This article addresses the question of why this difference exists from the perspective of unions’ strategies, especially those related to ‘political agency’ and ‘social movement unionism’. The article conducts case studies of three individually-affiliated unions for young, female and migrant workers respectively, and argues that political agency and social movement unionism have contributed to the different performance among those individually-affiliated unions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 The Author(s). This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Economic and Industrial Democracy. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Individually-affiliated unions; Japan; political agency; precarious work; social movement unionism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of East Asian Studies (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number JAPAN FOUNDATION ENDOWMENT COMMITTEE 570 1015 GREAT BRITAIN SASAKAWA FOUNDATION 5129 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 18 Jun 2018 09:10 |
Last Modified: | 19 Oct 2021 12:40 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/0143831X18789794 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:131992 |