Poland regained statehood in 1918, and a divided trade-union movement united. Trade unions had first developed in Galicia, in Austrian Poland, in the 1870s, where unions were legal. German trade unions had organized Silesian workers in the western part of German Poland, and in Russian Poland, as in Russia, unions were illegal. With independence, local unions combined into a powerful movement under the general influence of the moderate Polish Socialist Party, although the union movement maintained an official policy of party neutrality. Another group of Christian trade unions organized separately.
Poland in the early 20th century was still an agrarian country, with 61 percent of the population engaged in agriculture in 1931. Moreover, under a severe economic crisis after 1918, the labour force was very fluid, with workers moving in and out of industry. Union structure was based not on skill but on industry, and even unemployed workers were incorporated. The biggest unions, like the railway workersâ union, supported extensive cultural activities, including clubs, libraries, and a secondary boarding school. Union membership in the 1930s fluctuated between 900,000 and 950,000 in spite of efforts by the government under JĂłzef PiĆsudski to split and weaken union solidarity. This figure represented about 18 percent of the working class of five million, including agricultural labourers and domestic servants.
Lech WaĆÄsa speaking to workers at the Lenin Shipyard in GdaĆsk, Poland, 1980.
Bettmann/Getty Images
Under the Communist government of Poland, the working class grew rapidly between 1947 and 1958. At the same time, trade unions became interlocked with management and government organs, losing their independent function. Wages were set centrally, and unions were relegated to administering social-welfare activities within the workplace. Even here, as the Polish economy began to decline in the late 1970s, unions faced challenges when they were unable to deliver these services, such as housing and holidays. At the same time, a shift in the social composition of the Polish working class created a less docile union membership. By 1972, only one-third of economically active Poles worked in agriculture; new recruits to industry came predominantly from proletarian backgrounds, and these were relatively young. The rapid mobility from blue-collar to white-collar jobs characteristic of Polandâs earlier Communist years had now slowed. These structural characteristics, combined with economic stagnation and the inability of trade unions to respond, produced a wave of strikes in 1980 and the rise of new trade unions to challenge the old. To settle the strikes, the Polish government in August 1980 agreed to recognize new, self-governing trade unions, authentic representatives of the working class whose task would be to defend the social and material interests of workers. Within weeks, new independent locals had federated into a national independent union, named Solidarity. Old trade unions were simultaneously reconstructed to become more independent from the state, but their membership plummeted from 12 million to 4 million by the end of 1980. Solidarity was declared illegal in December 1981, so that trade unions continued to be more fragmented than before 1980, but this pluralistic trend contributed to the revival of Solidarity and the defeat of the Polish Communist Party in elections in the summer of 1989.
Trade union flags fluttering as workers gather during a 2006 May Day rally in Tokyo.
Toru YamanakaâAFP/Getty Images
After Japanâs surrender in 1945, Allied occupation reforms spurred a spectacular spread of independent trade unions, which had been eliminated during wartime. Until it was halted in 1949â50 by sharp deflation, revision of labour laws, and a purge of leftists, unionism enlisted 6 million membersâalmost half of all workers. Unions resumed steady growth after 1955 as industrial employment leaped upward with Japanâs economic âmiracle.â Organized labour peaked in 1975 at 12.6 million members, one-third of all eligible workers, becoming the third largest movement among the industrialized democracies. As economic expansion slowed following the 1973â74 oil crisis and subsequent industrial restructuring toward hard-to-unionize services, union membership leveled off to one of every four workers.
Backed by new constitutional rights to organize, bargain, and strike, in sharp contrast to prewar years, Japanese unions made notable achievements as they increasingly emphasized industrial activity. Genuine union-management negotiations and wide-ranging joint consultation at enterprise, industrial, and national levels became well institutionalized. Also established was comprehensive legislation for labour standards and social security. Unions provided the principal support for such âprogressiveâ political parties as the Socialists, Democratic Socialists, and Communists, in opposition to the conservative Liberal-Democrats, who reigned continuously after 1948. However, unions were faulted for severe ideological disunity, undue employer influence, and a narrow focus on their membersâ interests to the neglect of unorganized workers and the wider society.
A chief feature of Japanese unionism is its decentralized âenterprise-levelâ structure. Numbering more than 70,000, most basic union organizations form inside, not across, large-scale private enterprises and government agencies. Democratically run, well-financed, and self-staffed, the typical enterprise union actively represents only workers âpermanentlyâ employed in the firmâblue- and white-collar together and also foremen. This rank-and-file choice reflects the influence of fundamental economic, technological, and sociopolitical forces in Japanese society. Some theories explain it as the legacy of Japanese feudalism or as part of a system of employer âpaternalism,â but most important has been what can be called a labour-market âdualism.â This evolved as Japan rapidly industrialized with sharply separated work forces for the relatively few large-scale, technologically advanced oligopolies on the one hand and for the millions of less secure small- and medium-size firms on the other hand. Considerable differentials in wages, benefits, working conditions, and employment security have long favoured the larger firms, so that a major reason to unionize within such enterprises lies in shared motivations among permanent workers to protect their advantages while simultaneously avoiding harm to their companyâs competitive strength.
In order to obtain and preserve gains and to avoid divisions, most unions seek coordination and guidance through industrywide federations and national centres. Upper-level organizations, although less well-financed, gradually have gained influence over enterprise unions despite decades of severe ideological rivalry, which began in the 1920s and revived with Japanâs defeat in World War II. From the 1950s to the 1980s, SĆhyĆ, the Socialistsâ backbone, and DĆmei, the Democratic Socialist mainstay, fiercely competed, but, along with two lesser centres, they finally achieved unity in 1989 with the founding of RengĆ (Japanese Trade Union Confederation), embracing almost eight million members. RengĆ potentially offers a broadened role for organized labour. It aims to shift union power from the enterprise to upper levels by merging the numerous industrial federations, embracing millions of unaffiliated union members, and organizing the unorganized in cross-enterprise union structures.
In 1955 SĆhyĆ successfully coordinated union demands by launching the first shuntĆ (âspring offensiveâ); this has since been continued annually for the bargaining of general wage and benefit increases in April, when Japanâs fiscal year begins. ShuntĆ counters the tendency toward disparate settlements at the enterprise level, where unionâmanagement negotiations formally occur, and also spills over into nonunion sectors, thus resembling an âincomes policyâ mechanism. ShuntĆ subject matter has gradually broadened to include issues such as work hours, pensions, and housing, as well as large wage bonuses paid once or more each year.
