After the Japanese economic boom of the 1970s, many American companies imitated many Japanese management methods, often in ways that challenged union control. The idea developed that the Japanese did not have labor unions in the way American companies do. Actually, Japanese labor unions do exist and have an important role in the industrial life of the country, though the nature of these unions may differ from what is found in the United States. Actually, Japan has more than 65,000 labor unions, but only one-fifth of the labor force belongs to a union. Most of these unions are organized not as addressing an industry-wide job specialty as would be true in America but as enterprise unions whose membership is restricted to regular, full-time employees working in a single company and its affiliates. These
             unions are embedded in larger organizations: "An individual company's enterprise union generally belongs to an industry-wide union federation, one example being Un'yu Roren (All Japan Federation of Transport Workers' Unions), and that federation in turn usually belongs to a national, cross-industry labor federation. The largest of these is Rengo (Japanese Trade Union Confederation). It was established in 1989 and claimed a membership of 6.83 million people in June 2002 ("Japan Fact Sheet"). This actually shows a decline given that union membership stood at 35 percent in 1975, with one reason given for the decline being "a fall-off in the percentage of workers in manufacturing and other industries that tend
             to be highly unionized, and, in part, to an increasing number of young employees who prefer to abstain from union membership" (Japan Fact Sheet).
             The labor unions date from the Occupation era after World War II, and the laws passed then remain in force with few changes. These laws legitimized unions as bargaining units on behalf of the employees of large companies and also as political organizations. The laws also prohibited strik...