The Interwar Employment System in Japan: A Comparative Study of the Employment Conditions of White-Collar Staff and Workers

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  • 戦間期雇用関係の労職比較 : 「終身雇用」の実態
  • センカンキ コヨウ カンケイ ノ ロウショク ヒカク シュウシン コヨウ ノ

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The outbreak of World War I, which spurred on industrialization, provided a good opportunity for the rise of a lasting labor movement for the first time in the Japanese history. Under union pressure, labor management of big companies clearly changed. According to a popular view, from the period of WWI, managers invented a set of welfare programs including seniority-based wage system for workers, regarding them as members of the enterprise community just like white-collar staff. These caused a sharp decrease in the workers separation rate under the stagnation of the labor market after the panic of 1920, thus resulting in the emergence of "permanent employment". If this view is true, it follows that "the Japanese emyloyment system" in large factories today, characterized as "white-collarizationof workers"(Kazuo Koike), took its shape in the interwar period. However, no one has ever raised and objection to another common opinion that there existed sharp discrimination between staff employees and workers all through the pre-war period. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interwar employment conditions of both white-collar staff and workers intensively with special reference to Hitachi Co. Ltd., and to shed light on the problems as mentioned above. The chief points illustrated are as follows: (1) At Hitachi, employment management encouraging long-term service such as school-graduate hiring and seniority wage came to be arranged systematically for white-collar staff in the late 1920's. It was also applied to workers in part, which brought about stratification in the labor market of both large and small factories. (2) However, managerial efforts to elicit long-term service of workers were limited and inconsistent. Workers hired upon graduation comprised only 10% of all the recruits between 1920 and 1938. Wages of workers didn't necessarily rise with seniority, and income differentials between junior staff and workers amounted to four times as much in the late forties. When business was slow, old workers with seniority were most often fired. (3) The remaining rate of workers recruited in the late 1920's is estimated to be about 40%, while junior staff was about 70% and senior staff was about 90%. The rate of workers recruited in the late 1930's is presumed to be much lower, but this did not occur in the case of staff employees.

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