The political agency and social movements of Japanese individually-affiliated unions

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.