Research Article
Uniqueness of Enterprise Unionism in Korea and Japan -Conformity to Internal Labor Market and Implication to the None-regular Work-
서강대학교 동아연구소
Published: January 2010 · Vol. 58, No. 0 · pp. 183-227
Full Text
Abstract
Through the process of state-led industrialization, the labor of Korea and Japan have had limits in being equal to the state and the capital in labor politics. Therefore, the status of organization to their unions have been very fragmented commonly. And this kind of unionization form has a great conformity to forming and maintaining the internal labor market. The enterprise unions in the two countries have bargaining power to gain their higher wages and more favorable working conditions from their employers. Besides, the power has been strong enough to have a great ripple effect on other internal labor markets. And the unions have meaningful effect on the labor markets at macro level too. Since the mid 1990s, the states of Korea and Japan have retracted their protections and regulations for more flexible labor market. Therefore, internal management by the interest adjustment between the business and the labor have become the most important mechanism for controlling the industrial relations. And in these relations, the enterprise unions in Korea and Japan have been important mediators, getting more exclusiveness to the external labor markets. Being excluded from the protection of unions and lacking necessary regulations from the states, the large scales of non-regular workers in the two countries are faced more unstable conditions than their partners in the internal labor markets.
