History of Japanese Labor Unions 11

In a company, there are not only permanent employees but also "temporary employees."
However, company unions exclude those who are not permanent employees.
In this way, the number of unorganized workers (people who are not targeted by company unions) continues to increase.
In time, managers also realize that if they increase the number of irregular workers and part-time workers instead of permanent employees, the union will not encourage them to join.
In this way, company unions have ignored the increase in subcontracted workers and dispatched workers.
This is because, even if there are many unorganized workers, company unions can win certain results in large companies.

In this situation in Japan, printing workers thought about forming an individual membership labor union.
They formed an individual membership labor union that brought together workers from small companies within the "全印総連(Zenin-soren)" (a federation of major publishing and printing labor unions). As we remember, the official name was the "Publishing, Printing, and Bookbinding Workers' Union."
They realized that if the number of unorganized workers continued to increase, they would not be able to protect their own rights.
And it was a success.
As a result, the movement to create individual membership labor unions spread rapidly. This was also the beginning of the movement to form individual membership labor unions in the film industry.
The same phenomenon occurred in private schools.
"日教組(Nikkyoso)" organized teachers at public elementary, middle, high schools, and universities, but until then, private schools did not have labor unions.
Nikkyoso was responsible for organizing them.
If you try to form a union at a school with a small number of teachers, the first person to join is immediately fired.
So they started organizing clandestinely.
Once they had gained a certain number of members, the union declared its existence to management and began operations openly.

In this way, we at Eisanro learned a lot from the individual membership labor union movement in printing and publishing, and private schools.

*This is the general method of Japanese labor unions, which starts as a clandestine organization at first and declares itself to capitalists when it reaches a certain number of members. Japanese labor unions also change their names frequently. Also, because their official names are very long, they all use abbreviations.

"Ningen no Kabe" An independent film funded by Nikkyoso. It depicts a labor union of elementary school teachers. 1959. Directed by Satsuo Yamamoto. Credit: Yamamoto Productions

One of the union films. "NORMA RAE" (1979) credit: Rose and Asseyev production Director Martin Ritt was close to the American Communist Party and was a victim of the Red Scare in Hollywood.