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tkinson’s flexible firm model analyses the segmentation of the workforce utilising the concepts of core and periphery. This model offers a starting point for examin-ing the segmentation of Japan’s labour market but provides little direction in the explor-ation of why women are predominant in the part-time workforce. The disparity in employment conditions between female and male workers in the periphery is fostering the development of a gender hierarchy in Japan’s non-full-time workforce resembling that existing in ‘lifetime’ employment practices. This raises questions which challenge the applicability of a model for analysing part-time work in Japan, which ignores a consideration of the gender contract.Employment relations in Japan have generated intense analysis in recent decades. Despite this attention, few studies document the diversity of employment con-ditions, work practices and life experiences of workers in the growing service sector industries. As in other industrialised countries, the number of jobs con-structed as part-time is increasing and women are predominant in these jobs. How can we understand the explosion in part-time jobs and the predominance of women employed part-time in Japan? Are employers simply responding to increasing competitive pressures by instituting more flexible work practices? Are women demanding jobs which require them to work fewer hours?–– and does the increase in part-time work represent positive trends in employment for women in Japan?
Flexibility has gained currency for its analyses of changes in workplace organ-isation, in particular for analysing labour utilisation. Atkinson’s flexible firm model (1984) is one example of how flexible theorists have characterised these changes. Atkinson’s model focuses on the ways the implementation and utilisation of new technology, less rigid work practices and the greater use of an adjustable peri-phery contribute to a firm’s profitability and competitiveness. He observes that employers have created a large periphery to bear the burden of restructuring. The periphery will be comprised mainly of women ‘more of whom will find them-selves relegated to dead-end, insecure and low paid jobs.’ (Atkinson 1984: 31) The periphery bears the burden of restructuring in two ways. First, despite both
core and periphery work forces being governed by production demands, employment for the periphery is less secure. Second, the periphery subsidises the pay, security and career opportunities of the core workforce. Japan’s highly segmented labour market certainly supports Atkinson’s observations. Women are predominant in the periphery and the lower pay and inferior conditions of the periphery subsidise the practices of ‘lifetime’ employment. Atkinson’s model how-ever, provides little insight into why women are overrepresented in part-time work. This paper draws on intensive analysis of one large national supermarket chain in Japan, Daiichi (a pseudonym). Through an analysis of part-time work in Japan this paper addresses the questions raised earlier and examines the explan-atory power of Atkinson’s flexible firm model.
WOMEN AND WORK INJAPAN
Early studies of work in Japan conflated ‘lifetime’ employment to represent all constructions of work in Japan. ‘Lifetime’ employment, once characterised by continuous employment with a single employer until retirement, is now under-stood as employment until retirement, applying only to full-time male workers in large companies. Women’s work experiences do not conform to this ‘standard’ male pattern and consequently have been, and are, valued negatively in terms of both status and conditions. The proportion of women in the Japanese workforce has not changed dramatically in the postwar period (approximately 39–40 per cent) (Rôdôshô 2001: Appendix 5) but there has been a significant shift in the composition of the female workforce. Figures indicate that the proportion of married women has increased over time to 56.9 per cent of the female popu-lation in paid work compared with single women who represent 33.1 per cent (Rôdôshô 2001: Appendix 31).
Employment patterns for women in Japan have developed through the con-nection between age and the sexual division of labour resulting in an ‘M-shaped’ curve. In recent decades the shape of the ‘M’ has changed, reflecting shifts in female lifecycles. The M-shaped employment pattern is characterised by lower numbers of women in paid employment between the ages 24 to 34 years. In recent years the decrease at ages 24 to 34 years is neither as sharp nor as steep. This reflects greater variety in lifestyle choices for women––to remain single, to marry later, to have fewer children. Consequently there is less compulsion to quit the workforce and fewer years out of the workforce. A further recent change in the pattern of women’s employment is that the second peak of the M is not as sharp. This indicates women are re-entering the workforce earlier combined with the desire of more women to remain in the workforce longer (Rôdôshô 2001: 3).
PART-TIME WORKERS INJAPAN
to hiring women full-time. As in other countries, married women (51.2 per cent of part-time workers, Rôdôshô 2001: 35) and women over the age of 35 years predominate in part-time work. The 2000 Labour Force Survey reports that women in the age group 35–64 years represented 79 per cent of the part-time workforce (Rôdôshô 2001: 37). Despite inconsistencies in definitions in govern-ment surveys,172 per cent of part-time workers are women (Rôdôshô 2001: 35)
and approximately 72 per cent of these are concentrated in tertiary sector indus-tries such as retail and wholesale, finance and health (Rôdôshô 2001: 37). In 1995 the wholesale, retail and hospitality industries category was the second largest employer of women (29.1 per cent, Rôdôshô 1997: 58).
Definitions of part-time workers in Japan
The Part-time Workers’ Law (1993) defines part-time workers as those work-ing less than 35 hours per week (Rôdôshô 1996: 1). Accordwork-ing to the Labour Force Survey (2000), the number of part-time workers working less than 35 hours per week had declined, despite the growth of part-time jobs (Rôdôshô 2001: 36). The trend is for part-time workers to be employed for longer than 35 hours per week. Those workers working longer than 35 hours per week are not defined as part-time. Statistics are difficult to obtain, but estimates suggest that in 1993 approximately 30 per cent of part-time workers in manufacturing worked the same hours as full-time workers (Ôwaki 1993: 14). Yamada’s (1997) study of part-time workers employed by a car parts manufacturer indicated that not only did all part-time workers work the same hours as full-time workers, but they per-formed the same job. As these workers are not categorised as part-time, they are not covered by the Part-time Workers’ Law but theoretically are covered by exist-ing labour legislation, although this has not been tested. Evidence from Daiichi and other studies (see Roberts 1994; Yamada 1997) also suggests male short-time workers are not categorised as part-time workers. They are employed under dif-ferent conditions from women who are categorised as part-time workers. Male short-time workers are employed for longer hours, are paid higher hourly wages and have access to greater benefits. In 1995, part-time workers earned 80 per cent of a male short-time worker’s hourly rate (Rôdôshô 1997: 35).
SUPERMARKETS
Japanese supermarkets are divided into two main categories. The General Merchandising Stores (GMS) which sell a range of goods: household items, electrical products, food and clothing, including their own brand of these pro-ducts, as well as services including ticket sales and travel. The second category, supermarkets (SM), sell mainly grocery items. Both first appeared in the early 1950s. Supermarkets, unlike department stores, were not regulated, and both GMS and SM chains were able to expand both the number of stores and the size of each store, to enlarge their share of the market (Orihashi 1991: 24–30).
sector employing part-time workers, representing 27.7 per cent of the total (Rôdôshô 1997: 15).
Daiichi
Daiichi is Japan’s largest retail company and largest supermarket chain with 365 stores throughout Japan and branches overseas. The number of its stores is double that of its closest competitor. The Daiichi company includes department, specialist and convenience stores, and services such as restaurants and hotel and leisure facilities as well as financial institutions and real estate development. Defined as GMS, supermarket chains such as Daiichi verge on superstore status because of size, the volume of goods sold and their control over their own manu-facturing, wholesale, distribution and retail process. Daiichi’s supermarkets sell a range of goods including grocery and electrical products developed in col-laboration with major manufacturers and retailing under its own private label (Kunitomo 1997: 91; Daiichi 1993, company document).
Daiichi is representative of large supermarket chains nationwide in the pro-portion of women workers employed in its full-time and part-time workforce. Of Daiichi’s 46 000 employees, more than half (27 000) are part-time or casual. My earlier research at five Daiichi stores and two additional national supermarket chains indicates all workers categorised as ‘part-time’ are women. Daiichi defines a part-time worker as ‘a woman casual who has fulfilled the promotion criteria’ (1985: 217). Daiichi does not categorise its male short-time workers as part-time.
METHODOLOGY
With very little published in English on Japanese supermarkets, to generate suf-ficient data to analyse the construction and definition of part-time work in Daiichi, I combined a number of methodologies including participant observation, a ques-tionnaire survey and interviews. In 1992 I worked as a casual for 10 months in one of Daiichi’s Tokyo stores. I conducted a questionnaire in 5 other Daiichi stores. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 14 part-time workers2 and
casuals in 1993 and subsequently. In combining these discussions with a ques-tionnaire, I have been able to get beyond a simple statistical profile of part-time workers and to create a picture of part-time work in a supermarket. My sample wasn’t random. To gain the depth of data I wanted, I interviewed people with whom I was familiar and had developed a close relationship. The average age of those interviewed was 50 years, all were married, and their average length of service was 15 years.
HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND PART-TIME WORK?
function as a form of industrial reserve army of labour because they are cheap to employ and, not being the ‘main income earner’, are easily disposable. Shiozawa and Hiroki (1988) argue that, in Japan, female labour functions as a ‘safety valve’ allowing employers to adjust their workforce in response to business cycles. Part-time workers therefore bear the brunt of economic downturns, and make it pos-sible to adjust to economic cycles. Employers utilised women in this way in the seventies and early eighties but, since the late eighties, part-time workers have become a skilled, professional workforce central to the enterprise. (Takenaka 1991: 30). The focus of these discussions relies on the labour market as the sole deter-minant of the form of paid work performed. This argument is attractive as it addresses the issue of women in the periphery, but focusing on the cheaper cost of women’s labour or dispensability means they are unable to explain why women are the first to be retrenched.
Hakim proposes a sociological perspective, arguing that part-time work is taken up voluntarily by women who are giving priority to a non-market activity (1997:31). Hakim (1997) is critical of what she identifies as the ‘feminist and trade union perspectives’ for inaccurately portraying part-time work as being forced on women because of childcare responsibilities. Hakim’s argument that working part-time is a voluntary choice exercised by women giving priority to a non-market activity is difficult to sustain given the age restrictions placed on full-time jobs in Japan which limit the choice women have in paid work to part-time jobs. Beechey and Perkins (1987) form part of the literature that Hakim is criticis-ing when referrcriticis-ing to the ‘feminist and trade union perspectives’ of part-time work which are ‘gloomy’ (Hakim 1997: 31). Hakim’s emphasis however is mis-placed. It is not the feminist and trade union perspectives which are gloomy, as they contribute signficantly to our understanding of part-time work in Japan, but the picture of part-time work in Japan which is inescapably gloomy. Beechey and Perkins, in examining conditions in Britain, argue that jobs are constructed as part-time precisely because they are defined as ‘women’s jobs’ (1987: 37).
In order to understand part-time work in Japan it is necessary to analyse it as part of ‘lifetime’ employment. For women in particular, it is one element of the discriminatory employment conditions which exist within ‘lifetime’ employment practices. Japan is a ‘corporate-centred society’ organised and structured around large private companies. The role of women in this corporate-centred society is to maintain the family: ‘while men work heart and soul for the company, women must do the same to ensure men can continue to do so’ (Ôsawa 1995: 249). Involvement in public life including full-time paid work is perceived as conflict-ing with the appropriate and effective conduct of this role. In this way, part-time work is seen as ‘fitting in’ with a woman’s domestic responsibilities.
FLEXIBILITY
According to Atkinson the periphery is divided into two categories. The first is regular employees who, employed in clerical or supervisory positions, have less job security and no career opportunities compared with the core. This group pro-vides numerical and functional flexibility because their skills are readily available in the external labour market, and so they can be hired and fired as the business cycles demand. As the jobs involved are defined as less skilled than those in the core, these workers receive little training. The second group comprises part-time, casual and other temporary workers, providing the company with additional numerical and financial flexibility. The employment of these workers matches the company’s business needs. Atkinson describes their role as ‘maximising flexi-bility while minimising the organisation’s commitment to the worker’s job security and career development’ (Atkinson 1984:29).
Part-time work at Daiichi
Atkinson’s model broadly applies to the segmentation of Daiichi’s workforce and the division within the periphery. Earlier research from Daiichi and two addi-tional naaddi-tional supermarket chains indicates that the part-time workforce is divided into ‘permanent’ and ‘casual’3type part-time workers (Broadbent 2002).
In agreement with Atkinson’s analysis, some full-time workers are included in the periphery. What his analysis doesn’t illuminate is that, in large companies, these full-time workers are largely female and employed in less secure positions and with inferior conditions and fewer benefits than their male colleagues (Ogasawara 1998: 36). Atkinson’s analysis is accurate in describing the status attached to core and periphery. In Japan, employment in the core workforce does imply higher value or status placed on workers. Those in the periphery are treated as marginal, receiving lower wages and conditions and access to few benefits or career opportunities. Part-time work in Japan, unlike part-time work in Sweden isn’t a transitional phase to full-time work. Atkinson’s analysis however, doesn’t highlight the utilisation of part-time workers’ labour. In terms of the hours worked, length of service and the tasks performed, application of the term peri-phery doesn’t adequately reflect the benefits employers gain.
Job content
Apart from the organisation of staff, permanent part-time workers perform identical tasks to female full-time workers. A casual in the household goods section commented to her manager, at an informal drinking session on the 1993 company trip, that she had both the length of service and the job knowledge to become a manager. His response was that the content of the job and the status of the worker were important criteria. As many of the permanent part-time workers and associate part-part-time workers I spoke to are aware of how their jobs compare to those of full-time workers, few are persuaded by company argu-ments that their jobs are different (Broadbent 2002).
Yoshizumi-san from haberdashery joined Daiichi in 1975. She was ineligible to become a permanent part-time worker as she was six months over the age limit by the time she had satisfied the two years as an associate part-time worker. She describes an average day:
As my department [on the third floor] is separate from the centre of the ‘hard’ section [seventh floor], the manager and assistant manager only come to my sales area in the morning to check I’ve arrived and then again in the evening to pick up the register tape. I work from 10 AMuntil the store closes [7.30 PM] and I am
respon-sible for closing and totalling the register. I am the only casual to do this and feel trusted. Sometimes the responsibility is too heavy. Due to the lack of interference from the manager it is easier to do my job but I don’t earn the same wages or con-ditions as a full-time worker for running a section.
In highlighting further the extent to which the jobs of permanent part-time workers and full-time workers overlap, Takashima-san, a permanent part-time worker in manchester (bed linen) comments:
I am consulted by a lot of the young full-time workers on work-related issues. Many of them ask me about displays, sales techniques, how to organise seasonal sales which gives me a feeling of satisfaction. I’ve been told that the full-time workers who have been transferred from this section to other stores do not have a good reputation. The reason is they are not knowledgeable about all aspects of the section because we part-time workers are too competent. We have been told we have to let the full-time workers do more.
The restructuring of the part-time workforce at Daiichi in 1992 was in response to the deepening recession and the difficulty for retail outlets, particularly super-markets, to attract male time workers while decreasing the number of full-time female workers. Numerically, Daiichi’s workforce is dependent on part-full-time workers. Since the introduction of the permanent part-time worker system (1981), Daiichi has restructured its workforce, relying to a greater extent on permanent part-time workers as a substitute workforce for women full-time workers. Daiichi management has broadened the job content of permanent part-time workers to involve greater decision-making, leaving those tasks defined as auxilliary to casuals. Restructuring has seen all workers, including permanent part-time workers performing a wider range of tasks (Daiichi 1991: 2).
practice is under consideration (Broadbent 2002). The system may not have been introduced formally, but through the permanent part-time worker system, Daiichi has a source of labour that performs a range of tasks similar to those per-formed by full-time workers but who are considerably cheaper for Daiichi to employ.
Hours worked
Over time Daiichi’s construction of part-time working hours has changed, coincid-ing with general trends to lengthen part-time hours. In the seventies, part-time hours coincided with school hours as many part-time workers had school-aged children. The women were able to combine paid work and child care while juggling schedules with their partners. The hours of many part-time workers have doubled during their years at Daiichi, and not necessarily in response to their own needs. When Miyake-san started in the stationery section twenty years ago (1980–2000), her working hours allowed her to drop off and pick up her daughter from kindergarten:
I now work from 10 AMuntil 6 PMWhen my daughter was in kindergarten and lower
primary school my hours were shorter. I worked from 11 AMuntil 2 PM. I didn’t want to increase my hours, but it was made clear the choice was to work longer hours or not have my contract renewed.
Child care is no longer an issue for the majority of part-time workers interviewed and surveyed, but the responsibilities of aged/dependent parent/spouse care is presenting challenges for their ability to continue paid work. Ono-san was able to negotiate finishing her shift one hour earlier during the nine months she cared for her hospitalised husband.4The hours worked by part-time workers at Daiichi
had shifted from those accommodating employees desire to ‘fit’ their working hours to children’s school hours in the seventies to the present demand of having part-time workers working a similar number of hours to full-time workers. The working hours of part-time workers are now set at the convenience of the employer, a trend noted by Walsh in his study of retailers and hoteliers in England (1990: 521).
Compared with full-time workers, part-time workers in Japan receive lower wages and poor employment conditions which are justified on the grounds that, because the majority of part-time workers are married women, they are not self supporting. Women and part-time workers are treated by employers as secondary or marginal workers who do not require benefits, training or career paths because they are perceived as uncommitted to their jobs, an attitude Probert also notes in her study of Australian part-time workers (1995: 15).
of banking in Australia (1993: 178), part-time workers at Daiichi were employed on six-month contracts for up to 20 years. Their length of service was not reflected in their pay, benefits or access to training and promotion. The implications of this are that women are locked into the secondary labour market and are not recompensed for the skills and experience they acquire.
The flexible firm model assumes the ‘core’ of full-time workers is central to the enterprise. This understanding is inappropriate and inaccurate for service sector industries in Japan, particularly supermarkets. Part-time workers at Daiichi are numerically the core workforce in some sections during store opening hours; their pay, however, doesn’t reflect this responsibility. Part-time workers such as Yoshizumi-san and Takashima-san are not remunerated for the responsibilities they undertake. The focus on the full-time ‘core’ ignores the majority of the work-force whose presence is essential to the functioning of the company but whose positions are marginalised through different employment conditions and bene-fits. As Lever-Tracy argues, most part-time workers serve functions other than that of providing flexibility, instead fulfilling regular needs in continuing jobs irrespective of their formal, company-defined status (1988: 235).
Atkinson’s flexible firm model assists in understanding the existence of employer initiated strategies of flexibility, but it doesn’t deepen our understanding of why women comprise the majority of the periphery. How can we understand that there is a gender hierarchy developing not just in ‘lifetime’ employment with its dual track path but in non-full-time employment? While female and male workers both comprise the periphery, male short-time workers receive better pay and con-ditions than women part-time workers.
THE IMPACT OF OTHER FACTORS
The significance of the labour market in determining forms of paid work is undeniable, but to explore the work lives of part-time workers in Japan it is neces-sary to examine other impacts on the paid work options available to women. In Japan it is necessary to understand the division of labour by sex and the role of the state and legislation and the attitude of mainstream unions in legitimising and institutionalising this division of labour as ‘natural’.
THE ROLE OF THE STATE AND LEGISLATION
The introduction of the Part-time Workers’ Law in June 1993 ended the legal limbo for part-time workers, but only covers part-time workers working 35 hours or less per week. Using this definition, part-time workers at Daiichi are not covered. Of the 14 part-time workers I interviewed, all but one worked more than 35 hours per week, in excess of the number of hours used to define part-time workers in the Part-part-time Workers’ Law.
Equity legislation
workers, so is of little value in improving their employment conditions. By not guaranteeing income, legislation introducing Childcare leave and Dependent care leave means women, the lowest paid, are the majority of applicants. For most families it would not be economically viable for the higher paid male earner to apply for leave and also jeopardise his progress up the corporate ladder. Despite the active participation and commitment of feminists, the range of equity legis-lation has had the effect of institutionalising workplace inequalities. The Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) (1986), Childcare Leave Law (1991) and Dependent Care Leave Law (1996) do not cover part-time workers.
Prior to the introduction of the EEOL in 1986, ‘maternal protection’ policies were part of the Labour Standards Law (LSL), the dominant legislation related to employment conditions for working women until the 1970s. These clauses focused on women’s reproductive functions and, while intended to protect women from exploitation, delineated a woman’s capacity to participate in the workforce through limits on overtime and bans on night work. In effect employers used these measures to exclude women from certain occupations. The introduction of the EEOL resulted in the revision of the LSL, and women in management and specified occupational categories were to be employed equally with men. Shinotsuka calculated that this applied to less than 5 per cent of women workers (1994: 106). As Shinotsuka points out, the provisions in the LSL which construed women as ‘different’ from men are still in existence despite the intro-duction of the EEOL (Shinotsuka 1994: 107).
Tax policies which construe women as dependent on a male income earner, rather than as independent workers, encourage women to ‘choose’ part-time work. The salary for a male white-collar professional includes a dependent spouse allowance whereby a dependent wife can earn up to 1.03 million yen. The level at which this threshold is set is too low for a woman to support herself inde-pendently, let alone include children. The incomes of the part-time workers I interviewed exceeded this limit. This imposed an extra burden as they had to finance their own employment insurance, health and pension contributions. By remaining within the non-taxable threshold, a dependent wife is included in the health cover and pension scheme of her husband. The ‘choice’ a woman can make about paid work occurs within a framework of inequality, and is determined by state and employment policies. Revision of the National Pension Law in 1986 and the tax code in 1987 put working wives in an inferior position to unemployed wives.
The government’s desire to strengthen the foundation of the family means that women bear the burden of welfare provision. A tension exists between govern-ments that want women as carers of children and aged relatives in the wake of further cuts in social welfare, and employers who want women as cheap labour. Part-time work has been created as a way of resolving this tension. Part-time work in Japan needs to be examined in relation to the gender contract which is defined as:
The ‘breadwinner’ norm exists within Japan’s gender contract. A woman’s role is indispensable to complement male full-time workers who form the backbone of Japan’s corporate society, the ‘corporate warriors’.
UNIONS AND AN INCREASINGLY PART-TIME WORKFORCE
The flexible firm model ignores union responses to the increasing use of a flex-ible workforce, assuming workplace relations are controlled by management. Flexibility is not considered from the perspective of the workers, what it means for them and how they have registered their dissatisfaction with being made flex-ible. There is no analysis of the nature and gender composition of unions which, given the ideological reorientation of the Japanese union movement and the con-tinued decline in union membership, are important issues.
Enterprise unions contribute to, and benefit from, the gendered construction of paid and unpaid work and of the segregation of women into part-time work. The enterprise union at Daiichi has given tacit support to these classifications, and has adopted them as the basis for their own categorisation of part-time workers. Permanent part-time workers at Daiichi differ from casuals in that they are eligible for membership in the enterprise union.
Women employed as full-time workers are hired under different employment conditions from men and do not receive wages, annual payments, promotion opportunities and other fringe benefits equivalent to men. Men are protected from competition from women for these scarce positions through their repres-entation in enterprise unions and because of the scope of employer-enterprise union bargaining. Enterprise unions benefit because there is no conflict in the maintenance and protection of the working conditions and interests of their core membership––full-time male workers.
Similarly, Cynthia Cockburn (1983) argued that male workers’ greater participation than female workers in union–employer negotiations allows male workers to maintain a privileged position with higher status as workers and higher wages than women workers. For Japan, it is necessary to examine the scope of issues on which unions are able to bargain.
There is no analysis of the nature and gender composition of unions nor the impact of unionisation on the employment conditions of part-time workers. Part-time workers at Daiichi are unionised into the existing enterprise union, due largely to affiliation with the industrial union, Zensen Domei,5 the Japanese
Federation of Textile, Garment, Chemical, Distributive and Allied Industry Workers’ Unions which pursues a closed shop policy.
Of the unions surveyed, the organising of part-time workers is restricted to permanent part-time workers. The unionising of part-time workers is significant particularly as the Japanese union movement continues to experience decline. In 1999 union membership stood at 22.2 per cent of the workforce ( Japan Institute of Labour 2000). However, Daiichi is one of only a few unions to unionise part-time workers. Accurate figures are difficult to locate but estimates indicate only 4 per cent of part-time workers are unionised (Rôdôshô 1996: 81).
workplace, but only 9 per cent of these unions included part-time workers in their union (Furugôri 1997: 117). The 1997 Pâtotaimâ no Jittai reports that of the 95.7 per cent of part-time workers who are not unionised, 91.1 per cent are employed in companies where the enterprise union does not include part-time workers (Rôdôshô 1997: 42). A 1980 survey of chain store workers conducted by the textile workers union found 40 per cent of members replied, when asked about unions, that ‘the union does not consider part-time workers so I can’t feel it has any connection with me’ (Furugôri 1997: 119). A study by Rengo( Japan Council of Trade Unions) in 1991 supports these findings. Thirty per cent of part-time workers responded that they wanted to join a union for non-regular workers only, followed by 26 per cent who responded that they wanted to join the same union as regular workers (Furugôri 1997: 120). Interestingly
Rengo’s Action Policy Plan for 1992–3 does not include any mention of part-time workers (Japan Labour Bulletin1992: 3). Nor are part-time workers listed in the current actions on its website.
Daiichi’s enterprise union includes permanent part-time workers as members, but they are unable to hold executive positions within the union. The union’s explanation for this exclusion is similar to the explanation for low rates of union-isation among women; their working hours are short and they have family com-mitments, so can’t be around for the union meetings. It was one of the complaints voiced by permanent part-time workers in my survey that union meetings were held at times when they could not attend. At Daiichi, the main motivation for including permanent part-time workers as union members was in response to reductions in the employment of full-time workers. With numbers of full-time employees declining, the union was losing not only its membership but its source of finance, as well as facing a decline in its presence on the shopfloor. This raised the possibility of part-time workers affiliating with an outside union and forming a rival union within Daiichi, a situation that both management and the enterprise union wanted to avoid. Both therefore had reason to agree to selec-tive unionisation of part-time workers from the early eighties (Interview with
Zensen Domeiunion organiser in Tokyo, July 1989). Union and Daiichi manage-ment came to an agreemanage-ment to restrict union membership to permanent part-time workers.
An attempt was made by part-time workers in the Hachiban store to organ-ise their own union in 1980. This predates the unionisation of part-time workers by the present Daiichi union. Some of the part-time workers involved in the attempt are still with the store but have not attempted to organise a union a second time. Their grievances which included few rewards for service and lack of a career path compared to full-time workers, were resolved (not necessarily to everyone’s satisfaction) by the store manager of the time who was both liked and respected by many of the part-time workers. His actions were sufficient to deter further discussion of union organisation. A year later the Daiichi enter-prise union began unionising some part-time workers.
Japanese workplaces, are not well represented in union committees, enterprise and national, or in executive positions. Linked to this is the belief held by male union officials that women are not interested in union issues. My fieldwork reveals, however, that not only do part-time workers feel neglected by the enterprise union, the union’s core membership of full-time workers also reported that they would like to have an avenue for complaints that the union does not now offer them. Kawanishi’s argument that enterprise unions are an ‘auxiliary instrument’ of management gains credence in this light (1986: 151).
In the views of the part-time workers I surveyed, unions need to focus on abol-ishing discriminatory employment conditions between part-time and full-time workers and between female and male workers. Part-time workers stressed that they wanted unions to address disparities with full-time workers in pay and annual payments. As Takenaka and Kuba explained, ‘answers to the problems of part-time workers don’t lie in raising the income threshold’ (1994: 167).
CONCLUSIONS
Atkinson’s flexible firm model discusses in passing the presence of women in the ‘periphery’ and low paid dead-end jobs, but makes no attempt to incorporate an analysis of gender into the conceptual framework. In analysing part-time work in Japan, I examine the following areas of Atkinson’s model: the distinction between core and periphery, the role of the state and legislation, and the impact of the union on an increasing part-time workforce.
The increasing size of Japan’s ‘peripheral’ workforce has serious implications for all workers but particularly women workers. Flexibility conceals a number of important issues, such as those relating to gender, and ignores the point that labour is losing significant employment conditions in order to revive the profitability of the firm. Not all segments of the workforce will suffer however. Those defined or represented as unskilled are most vulnerable and in this respect women are at greater risk.
Central to understanding the relationship between women and paid work in Japan is an understanding of the sexual division of labour. It is important to examine ‘lifetime employment’ practices which have a direct impact on women through the application of restrictive age limits. An examination of how women workers are constituted by the policies and practices of governments, employers and enterprise unions is also necessary.
The superficiality of the flexible firm model, which assumes a natural division between the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ based on gender, and thus concludes that women will be relegated to the ‘low-paying, insecure, dead-end jobs’ in the ‘periphery’, does not begin to describe the complexity of employment relations in Japanese supermarkets.
are suffering in the same way, only those deemed unskilled, and in this respect women are at greater risk.
An analytical framework cognisant of the interplay of a number of variables is necessary for a fuller understanding of the implications of part-time work and its effects on Japan’s paid work force. A framework which examines the impact of public policy on women’s employment options including employment strategies, social policies such as tax and health insurance, and enterprise union policies and practices which constitute women on the basis that they are depen-dent on a male income is also important. It is clear that women, especially women with spouses, are the majority of part-time workers but the equating of women, and women as ‘housewives’ in a quasi-naturalistic way with part-time workers has negative implications for employment conditions and social policies for all women.
The construction of women used by employers, governments and enterprise union officials is a one dimensional representation of ‘women’. On the basis of this representation, employers have ‘appropriated’ the working lives of women further, by making assumptions about the type of paid work appropriate for women. In Japan part-time work has been created based on the perception not only of the kind of work that is appropriate for married women or women with dependents, but what women demand. Put differently, employers are pre-empting women’s choices.
In Japan it is assumed all women exceeding company-imposed age limits are ‘mothers’ and so are employed as part-time workers, irrespective of their actual family status. By utilising women in part-time work, employers are able to hire workers cheaply. Despite classifying and employing workers on a part-time basis, employers in Japan have constructed part-time work in such a way that it differs little from full-time employment. Part-time workers work a similar number of hours, and in similar and sometimes identical jobs, to full-time workers but are not given the same status, or paid the same benefits, as full-time employees.
The attraction of Japan’s ‘economic miracle’, though fading, needs to be tem-pered with studies which examine the impact of gendered and discriminatory employment policies on which the ‘economic miracle’ was predicated. As the Japanese economy remains in recession and revelations of bribery and dubious financial dealings foster disenchantment, the employment conditions of part-time workers may appear trivial. On the contrary, the issue of discriminatory employ-ment practices is of enormous significance, particularly for the many Japanese women who work part-time. An analytical framework which examines part-time work within the context of Japan’s gender contract will broaden our understanding of the complex relationship between women and work.
NOTES
1. Most surveys use 35 hours per week or less to define part-time work, and this is the definition used in the Part-time Workers’ Law (1993). The use of this definition has become more con-sistent since the introduction of the Law. It is not a definition however concon-sistently used among companies.
exam and interview before being eligible for promotion. In 1992 Daiichi reorganised its employee classification structure and eliminated the associate part-time worker step. All associate part-time workers were then classified as patona(casual). There are many terms refer-ring to non-full-time workers, depending on the company and the sex/gender of the worker. These terms are my approximations for the English.
3. Distinctions still exist between casuals who work few hours, students working casually, and permanent casuals.
4. In Japanese hospitals, while nursing staff are available, many family members (usually women) prefer to feed, clean and generally care for patient.
5. Originally Zensen Domeiunionised only workers in the textile industry, but gradually expanded to include numerous other industries. To reflect the industrial diversity of its membership this union adopted the abbreviated Zensen Domei as its preferred Japanese title, abandoning the former title (Zenkoku Seni Sangyo Rodo Kumiai Domei) which referred only to the textile industry.
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