Inequality in the workplace : labor market reform in Japan and Korea / Jiyeoun Song.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Song, Jiyeoun, 1975-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Labor market--Japan.

Labor market.

Labor market--Korea (South).

Manpower policy--Japan.

Manpower policy.

Manpower policy--Korea (South).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (248 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The past several decades have seen widespread reform of labor markets across advanced industrial countries, but most of the existing research on job security, wage bargaining, and social protection is based on the experience of the United States and Western Europe. In Inequality in the Workplace, Jiyeoun Song focuses on South Korea and Japan, which have advanced labor market reform and confronted the rapid rise of a split in labor markets between protected regular workers and underprotected and underpaid nonregular workers. The two countries have implemented very different strategies in response to the pressure to increase labor market flexibility during economic downturns. Japanese policy makers, Song finds, have relaxed the rules and regulations governing employment and working conditions for part-time, temporary, and fixed-term contract employees while retaining extensive protections for full-time permanent workers. In Korea, by contrast, politicians have weakened employment protections for all categories of workers.In her comprehensive survey of the politics of labor market reform in East Asia, Song argues that institutional features of the labor market shape the national trajectory of reform. More specifically, she shows how the institutional characteristics of the employment protection system and industrial relations, including the size and strength of labor unions, determine the choice between liberalization for the nonregular workforce and liberalization for all as well as the degree of labor market inequality in the process of reform.

Contents:

Japanese and Korean labor markets and social protections in a comparative perspective

The politics of labor market reform in hard times : a theoretical framework

The institutional origins of labor markets and social protections in Japan and Korea

Japan : liberalization for outsiders, protection for insiders

Korea : liberalization for all, except for chaebŏl workers.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780801471001

0801471001

9780801471018

080147101X

OCLC:

870273129