Labor management relations during high economic growth : japanese style labor management relations

This research paper defines the concept of labor-management relations broadly as “relations between a corporation (management) and workers (worker class),” and carries out a comparative analysis of labor-management relations during the period of high economic growth and the present. Generally, labor-management relations are often treated as relations between a corporation (management) and a labor union. However, in these times when the rate of unionization has declined to a low 17.7%, a variety of labor problems arise that fall outside the framework of that relationship. Compared with the present, the fact that the relationship between labor unions and corporations can be used as the framework for analysis in many cases is itself a characteristic of the high economic growth period. The fountainhead of labor-management relations during the period of high economic growth is “The Three Guiding Principles of the Productivity Movement” publicized in 1955. The Japanese economy had recovered to the level where the country was “no longer in the postwar period,” and striving for future growth through modernization was sought by national consensus. Corporations (management) and workers, who heatedly confronted each other repeatedly, constructed a labor-management mechanism to strive for modernization by instead transforming the incompatibility between productivity improvement and employment preservation into an opportunity for progress as each side raised the respective goals. This was “harmonious labor-management relations” as a collective with the shared fate of growing together as they persevered to achieve goals in their respective interests.