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  • Cross-National Comparisons of Social Movement Unionism: Diversities of Labour Movement Revitalization in Japan, Korea and the United States ed. by Akira Suzuki
  • Aziz Choudry
Akira Suzuki, ed., Cross-National Comparisons of Social Movement Unionism: Diversities of Labour Movement Revitalization in Japan, Korea and the United States (Bern: Peter Lang 2012)

Based on papers from a December 2010 workshop at Hosei University, Tokyo, Akira Suzuki’s edited volume is a welcome addition to Peter Lang’s “Trade Unions Past, Present and Future” series. It contributes to expanding the geographical scope of studies on union revitalization and social movement unionism (smu) in an era of capitalist globalization. The book is divided into three parts reflecting its major threads of inquiry: the impact of social movement unionism on existing labour movements; social movements from a cross-national perspective; and meso-level mediating factors explaining the diversities of social movement unionism. The eleven chapters focus mainly on cases of smu in Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Most contributors address the limits and possibilities of smu, its impacts on and in “mainstream” labour movements, mediated by specific historical, institutional, political, and economic contexts.

In his introduction, Suzuki, a labour sociologist and associate professor at Hosei University’s Ohara Institute for Social Research, writes “revitalization efforts took on new forms of organizing the unorganized in the United States and new forms of union organization in Japan and Korea.” (3) In particular, he notes [End Page 406] organizing immigrant workers in the low paying US service sector and nonregular workers and workers in small firms in Japan and Korea.

Building on Charles Tilly and William Sewell, and her own work on the “symbolic politics” of labour struggles at the margins of the USA and Korea, Jennifer Chun argues that it is “at the outer edges of existing union tactics and strategies that we observe examples of innovation and dynamism. What we find is a concerted effort by a relatively small group of unions and labour activists to expand the conception of labour politics beyond the workplace and beyond narrowly defined labour-management struggles.” (40) This, Chun argues, is part of a growing effort to prioritize the struggles of workers at the margins of the economy and society and transform understandings of who and how unions should organize the working class.

The Japan-focused contributions remind us that region-based amalgamated unions and community unions are similar to workers’ centres but have the right to collective bargaining. In addition, Suzuki notes the liberal union recognition procedures of Japanese labour law, whereby any group of workers, including those who form a minority in their workplaces, can form a union with the right to engage in collective bargaining with management of their respective firms, although in practice employers do not always respect the legal right of community unions. By contrast with North America and Britain, the Korean and Japanese community unionism discussed incorporates trade union functions.

Koshi Endo charts the emergence of women’s labour nonprofit organizations such as the Working Women’s Network and women’s trade unions in Japan. She argues that the dominance of union policies and practices based on the concept of “male breadwinner families” means that such unions are not ready to adequately protect and expand the employment rights of female workers, and that this failure poses an obstacle to genuine trade union revitalization. Heiwon Kwon documents the Korean Railway Workers Union’s (krwu) relative success in derailing Seoul’s railway privatization plan and how it was able to achieve gains for workers. She argues that this rested on krwu being able to sustain a high level of union vitality by educating and mobilizing its membership, creating and multiplying political channels, and building broad social coalitions for the defence of citizenship rights and public goods. The Korean cases presented emphasize the importance of coalition building with other movements and the sectors of society in the labour struggles considered here. Joohee Lee, writing on Korean retail workers’ struggles (comprising regular and non-regular workers in two unions and the E-land Group – a “Korean Walmart”), is cautious about the prospects of radical reorganization of Korea’s unions, yet says that “the...

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