As annual wage talks climax this month, one of the obstacles to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe¡¯s campaign for outsize pay raises has its roots in the 1940s: a stunted union movement.
The nation¡¯s top union boss, Nobuaki Koga, doesn¡¯t personally know what it¡¯s like to go on strike. Koga, the president of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, says he has mixed feelings about what became a cozy relationship between employers and their company-based unions.
Cooperation ¡ª encouraged during the U.S. Occupation, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur cracked down on aggressive unions ¡ª helped fuel the nation¡¯s rapid postwar revival. Now, weakened by economic stagnation and the legacy of a fractured labor movement, unions are struggling to pressure the nation¡¯s biggest companies, even as they post record profits amid low unemployment.
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