236 Shunto: The Role of Employer and Union Coordination at the Industry and Inter-Sectoral Levels

摘要: Since the 1980s, decentralisation of collective bargaining is said to have become a common trend among major advanced industrialised countries . In nearly all cases, the driving force behind the shift towards enterprise-level bargaining is the employer who had regarded national-and industry-level bargaining as an obstacle to introducing flexibility at the workplace (, pp. 11 –1212). In Japan, however, enterprise-level bargaining has been firmly in place for several decades. And yet, much coordination takes place between and among employers and unions at the industry and national levels in the process of wage bargaining, known as Shunto, or the Spring Offensive. Despite the impression that employers are gaining an upper hand over unions in Japan as elsewhere, there is no move towards dismantling the institution of Shunto which was after all initiated by unions. Why should this be the case?