Work Rules, Wages, and Single Status: The Shaping of the ‘Japanese Employment System’

Abstract

The status hierarchy in Japanese enterprises collapsed during the tumultuous years of ‘total war’ and post-war democracy, and the ‘Japanese employment system’ was greatly affected by the ‘white-collarisation of blue-collar workers’. This transformation can be seen through changes in the work rules and wages systems at Hitachi Electric from the 1930s to the 1950s. The labour ideology of the wartime planned economy, which saw enterprises as ‘production communities’ and assumed equality between white- and blue-collar workers, challenged the nature of employment relations. As the experience of the post-war union movement reveals, this wartime ideology exerted a pervasive influence on Japanese labour, and, during the US Occupation, it forced widespread, ‘democratic’ reforms on enterprise management. In consequence, the main elements of the Japanese employment system were formed and reinforced during the 1950s and 1960s.