Industrial Relations in Japan: The Peripheral Sector

The conventional picture of industry and industrial relations in Japan is of a number of very large firms providing extremely attractive working conditions for their happy and contented workforce. Norma Chalmers shows that there is in fact another, very different side to the picture, which occurs in the the peripheral sector. Here, conditions are often poor, wages very low and continuity of employment virtually non-existent. There are many small firms where the effectiveness of worker organ...