| Why do workers in some countries organize themselves by enterprise contrary to their counterparts in other parts of the world? This thesis proposes a new theoretical (socio-political) framework to solve this "puzzle." In contrast to popular (internal labor market and cultural) hypotheses, the proposed framework emphasizes political dynamics and the role of the state in labor relations and argues that the initial period of the collective bargaining era constituted a critical juncture (state labor policy) that occurred in distinctive ways in different countries and that these differences played a central role in shaping union structure in different countries in the following decades. The study conducts both an in-depth case study of the Japanese situation and the first systematic comparative study of union structure in nine Asian countries to test the validity of the proposed framework.;The study found a highly dominant, stable enterprise union system in Japan (>90%), Thailand (90%), and Malaysia (80%), where the state has consistently implemented an enterprise union system; and a dominant, but unstable enterprise union system in Korea (90%) and the Philippines (71%), where the state has implemented an enterprise union policy, with some interruptions. On the other hand, it found enterprise unions to be insignificant in Hong Kong (18%), where the state labor policy has been laissez-faire; and no enterprise unions until 1994 in Indonesia, where the state had implemented a centralization policy of labor unions. In the middle-ground of this spectrum are Taiwan (29%), where the state has pursued a dual union system of craft unions (which are the majority) and enterprise unions; and Singapore (43%), where the state policy has gradually swung from laissez-faire toward an enterprise union system since 1984. The reasons for the different state policies are explained in detail. The in-depth case study of the Japanese situation not only confirms these findings, but also provides strong evidence against popular hypotheses. I believe that the proposed framework significantly enhances our understanding of enterprise unionism in Asian countries. Future research should explore the validity of this framework through comparative studies of Latin American countries, where enterprise unions have also been observed. |
