The Changing Relationship between Labor Unions and Civil Society Organizations in Postwar Japan

Abstract

This article examines the historical development of the relationships between labor unions and civil society organizations (CSOs) in postwar Japan from the 1950s to the 2000s. The paper focuses on union-CSO relationships in three periods: the “post-authoritarian” period (the 1950s), the period of controversies over industrial pollution (from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s), and the period of union decline and neoliberalism (the 1990s and the 2000s). In the first period, the labor movement led coalitions as a “vanguard.” In the second period, the relationship between labor unions and CSOs became distant or tense. In the third period, to regain their social presence, labor unions formed coalitions with non-profit organizations (NPOs), and relationships between unions and CSOs were relatively equal. The third period also saw the development of more militant union-CSO coalitions to oppose labor market deregulation.