This week I will be talking about employment relations in East Asia (japan and Korea) and comparing and contrasting them. To give a little history to their employments relations, Japan was considered to be well developed while Korea has been likened rather to developing countries.
Similarities-
- enterprise unionism (affiliated with federations outside the enterprise)
- internal labour markets in large corporations (strong because working conditions in internal labour markets are superior to external labour markets)
- increase in non- regular or non standard workers (includes part time, temporarily daily or dispatched workers. Proportion of these workers increased)
Differences-
- cooperative vs confrontational (Japanese unions rarely strike and if they do they are quite short in duration. Peaceful relations are reinforced by Union participation. Korean ER are much more confrontational, unions generally do not trust management. They rather rely on collective action to improve working conditions)
- coordinated vs uncoordinated (japan- enterprise unions negotiate with respective employers for wage increase in the spring, high levels of coordination between management workers and unions. Koreas collective bargaining is decentralised and uncoordinated. Wage increase bargaining is decided at the firm level and is not uniform across all sectors)
- higher levels of employment security in Japan but not in Korea
- Japan bases pay on seniority, skills abilities etc of workers where as Korea bases it on seniority solely
- non regular workers tend to be part timers where as in Korea they tend to be temporary workers
The point of this blog this week was to provide a solid understanding of the similarities and differences between japan and Korea so the reader has a basis on which to make their own opinion about their employment relations and if globalisation has contributed to the convergence or divergence of their employment relations. Hopefully you all now have a better understanding than you did before reading this post :)
