Memo #4
By: Hyung-Gu Lynn
Working hours, wages, and health have grabbed headlines with the recent strikes at manufacturing plants in China. The William L. Holland Prize-winning article in Pacific Affairs in 2009 examines working conditions in Japan and the outcome of several recent court cases intended to limit work hours at Toyota and McDonald’s.
It shows how legal victories and public sympathy around issues of karoshi (deaths from overwork) have not yielded significant changes in corporate policies. Instead, the two corporate giants continue to use a battery of seven techniques to pressure or even compel overtime service work.
Charles Weathers of Osaka City University and Scott North of Osaka University argue that Japan is badly lagging behind in reforming a dysfunctional and dangerous employment system even as unemployment and low-wage jobs have increased in the past 20 years. Neither the government nor mainstream unions have taken serious action to remedy the problem, nor has the tradition of incremental and consensual policy-making been successful.
In response, grassroots labour struggles have focused on legal redress. Individual cases have become vehicles for bigger aspirations and wider critiques of Japan’s labour process. This takes place in a context where the majority of workers have little time for activism and have insufficient job security to risk aggressive union activity.
Drawing on a broad range of interviews and texts in Japanese and English, the authors conclude that success in shortening working hours will depend upon broad coalitions rather than activist pressure and court cases alone.
About the Author:
Hyung-Gu Lynn is the AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research, Institute of Asian Research, The University of British Columbia.
Links
- Charles Weathers and Scott North, ‘Overtime Activists Take on Corporate Titans: Toyota, McDonald’s and Japan’s Work Hour Controversy,’ Pacific Affairs, Volume 82, No. 4, Winter 2009/2010
- Pacific Affairs Journal
Related Memos:
See our other memos on Japan.