A New Framework of Enterprise Unionism: A Comparative Study of Nine Asian Countries

215 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005.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.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD