And for today's "huh" moment--Japan looks to be more unionized (by %) than the US

[Godhumor]

Japan has three main unions and then smaller unions for specific companies:

Rengo, the largest, represents the private sector and has over 6.6 million members
Zenroren and Zenrokyo represent trades and have approx 1 million members between the 2.
Edited to add: Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers' Unions (JAW) has approximately 770,000 members and an English website here: http://www.jaw.or.jp/e/

Specific companies that might be interesting to some here:

Toyota Motor Workers' Union - 60,000 members
Honda Union - 40,000 members
Nissan Union - 30,000 members

So yes, Japanese car companies in the US are not unionized, but they are back home (I actually have personal experience with this. My wife and I own a Ford and a Honda. The Honda we bought was 100% assembled at a Honda plant in my wife's home prefecture with union labor, which is why we bought it.).

A recent example of union action is the Toyota union dropping a demand for a universal pay raise this year in order to protect seniority based wages (A big part of Japanese companies): http://www.jihsin.com/news/toyota-union-plans-to-forgo-wage-hike-demand.html



And to my subject line:

This is the most recent data I could find after a few minutes (heh) looking on the web, which, unfortunately, is not all that recent (i.e. why I parsed my subject line a bit):

Union membership as percent of workforce in:
Sweden: 78.0% (2003)
Belgium: 55.4% (2003)
Brazil: 35.4% (1995 only)
United Kingdom: 29.3% (2003)
Japan: 19.7% (2003)
United States: 12.0% (2006)
Korea: 11.2% (2003)
France: 8.3% (2003)


http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=254182&knlgAreaID=108&subsecid=900003

[samplegirl]

1. Great Post

Thanks for sharing!

K&R

[Brickbat]

2. When Toyota builds here, it's not out of the goodness of its heart.

It's because people who work at those plants are willing to settle for less -- and to throw in a buttload of tax breaks for the privilege.

[Godhumor]

4. Actually, Nissan pretty much announced in December that union action in Japan would result in moving

more production to the US. Nice to know countries can outsource to us.

[SoCalDem]

6. The odd thing is that even though they can build plants here and get cheap workers

the health care costs often gobble up the savings, unless they can convince the local-yokels to do enough give-backs in exchange for a job better than Dairy Queen.

Workers are always at the mercy of employers to some extent, since the person who signs your paycheck will always have more power in an economy that has more workers than work-to-be done.

Cheer up young ones..

In not all that many years, when boomers have all checked out, you will not be on the hook to "take care of us", and our absence will "create job openings"..That's when workers will once again have some clout in the "let's-get-a-job" game. Of course, by then no one knows what jobs will be left here, so make that education a broad one, just in case.

[Godhumor]

7. I know a ton of young teachers are now being told to "hang in there" as subs until the mass...

Baby Boomer retirement hits in the next few years.

[xchrom]

3. recommend

[Godhumor]

5. Going to give this a bump, just because.

n/t