Japan

Freedom of association / Right to organise

Anti-Union discrimination

No information available.

Barriers to the establishment of organisations

Other formalities or requirements which excessively delay or substantially impair the free establishment of organisations

The system of trade union registration for local public employees requires separate unions to be created in each municipality.

Categories of workers prohibited or limited from forming or joining a union, or from holding a union office

Armed forces

Police

Other civil servants and public employees

There are limitations particularly for civil service employees and, to a lesser extent, for employees of state-run companies and private companies that are considered to have "higher social responsibility", i.e., those that provide essential services. Employees in firefighting services, penal institutions and the Maritime Safety Agency are not allowed to organise.

Right to collective bargaining

Limitations or ban on collective bargaining in certain sectors

Armed forces

Police

Other civil servants and public employees

Administrative and clerical workers do not have the right to bargain or conclude collective agreements at the local or national level. Their wages are set by law and/or regulations, partly based on recommendations issued by the National Personnel Authority and local personnel commissions. Employees in firefighting services, penal institutions and the Maritime Safety Agency do not have the right to bargain collectively.

Other categories

The worker dispatching is a system under which the dispatching business operator dispatches the workers employed by the company to a client (counter party), thus supplying labor services that will be under the command of the client. Under this system, the employment, wages and other working conditions of the dispatched workers are effectively determined by a dispatch contract concluded between the dispatching business operator and the client, and at the time of the finalization of the price negotiation and so on of the dispatch contract, the client, as the demand side, stands in an advantageous position. Thus, for the stability and improvement of the working conditions of dispatched workers, it is necessary for the trade unions to which the dispatched workers belong to exercise their right to organize vis-à-vis the client. The Worker Dispatching Act, however, has no regulation stipulating the obligation of the client to accede to collective bargaining, and the nature of the client in its status as employer of dispatched workers is ambiguous.

Right to strike

Undermining of the recourse to strike actions or their effectiveness

Excessive civil or penal sanctions for workers and unions involved in non-authorised strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike actions

Trade union leaders who incite strike action in the public sector can be dismissed and fined or imprisoned for up to three years under provisions of the National Public Service Employee Law and the Local Public Service Employee Law.

Limitations or ban on strikes in certain sectors

Undue restrictions for “public servants”

All public employees are banned from striking. The government has transformed public agencies into Independent Administrative Institutions (IAIs), which it classifies as “organisationally independent from the government”. Two types of IAIs have been created: “specified IAIs”, where the employees are national public employees, and “non-specified IAIs”, where the employees are not considered as public servants. Although all IAI employees have the right to organise and bargain collectively, only workers in the latter category are guaranteed the right to strike.