Judicial reform and the reform of the labor dispute resolution system

INTRODUCTION Since the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990’s, Japan’s industrial society experienced a drastic increase in individual employment disputes. At the same time, union management disputes have been clearly on the decline since the 1980’s. To cope with such a structural change of labor disputes, it was necessary to restructure the labor dispute resolution system, which was established after World War II. As a first step, in 2001 the Ministry of Welfare and Labor established a system to offer information, counseling and conciliation services through its local agencies. Then, the Labor Tribunal System was created in 2004 by Judicial Reform as a second major step to respond to the increase in employment disputes. In the same year, Judicial Reform also led modification of the conventional labor law system, i.e., the adjudication of union management disputes by Labor Commissions. Thus, as a consequence of Judicial Reform, the post-war labor dispute resolution system underwent a large-scale reform in recent years. This paper describes the backgrounds, process and contents of this reform.