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“New Labor Movements” in Asian Economies: South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka
Authors/Editors
Hitoshi Ota
Publication date
January 2025
ISBN
978-4-258-04666-9
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About this book
About this book
This book is a comparative study of labor movements in six Asian economies: South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Labor movements in Asia are diverse, and previous books have examined the cases of individual countries, usually focusing on specific common issues. In contrast, the present book discusses the labor movement in each economy from the perspective of “new labor movements,” which is an approach presented in the editor’s previous study, “New Labor Movements” in the Emerging Economies. New labor movements can be thought of as two distinct but related movements: the new labor movement in emerging economies observed in the 1970s and 1980s, and the inclusive and rights-advocating labor movement, which is discussed in the context of the revitalization of labor movement. Each author in the present book defines the new labor movement of each economy and then discusses the dynamics of the movement. This book does not include studies on China or India, Asia’s two major powers, because both countries were discussed in the previous book “New Labor Movements” in the Emerging Economies. Interested readers are encouraged to refer to that work.
https://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Books/Jpn_eBooks/eBook/202103_04
Contents
Perface
Introduction
The Contexts of “New Labor Movements” in Asian Economies
Hitoshi Ota
Chapter 1
South Korea: Post-democratization Labor Movement Responding to Globalization and Job Insecurity
Noriyo Isozaki
Chapter 2
Taiwan: Taiwan’s New Labor Movement
Ming-sho Ho (Translation by Yukihito Sato)
Chapter 3
Philippines: Expansion of Social Movement Unionism
Chapter 4
Thailand: State Corporatism and Social Movement Unionism
Akira Suehiro
Chapter 5
Bangladesh: Revisiting the Trade Union Movement with a Focus on the Readymade Garment Industry
Chapter 6
Sri Lanka: “New Labor Movement,” the Gap with Social Movements, and What Can Be Observed from a Trade Union Split
Hitoshi Ota
Conclusion
Summary and Prospects for the “New Labor Movement”
Hitoshi Ota
Preface
Preface
This book is the outcome of the research project “New Labor Movements in Asian Economies” organized by the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE) in 2022-2023. As the editor of the book, I am extremely relieved and pleased to have been able to publish this book, given that I was infected with COVID-19 in February 2023, at the end of the first year of the project, and have been dealing with the effects of the long COVID ever since. For this reason, I have regrettably caused a great deal of inconvenience to the members of the research project, especially in the second year. After submitting the draft for peer review in IDE in February 2024, I took a leave of absence, suspending my leave only to respond to the peer review. I wrote this preface at the time the manuscript was submitted to the editorial department for publication.
This book focusing on Asian economies builds upon my previous editorial work “New Labor Movements” in the Emerging Economies (2021, IDE). My personal wish to study new labor movements in Asia was the genesis of the research project, and I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the members of the project for their generous cooperation: Akira Suehiro (Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo), Noriyo Isozaki (Professor, Gakushuin University), Ming-sho Ho (Professor, National Taiwan University), Mayumi Murayama (Executive Vice President, IDE, Japan External Trade Organization/IDE-JETRO), and Yurika Suzuki (Director and Senior Research Fellow, IDE).
My colleagues Yukihito Sato, Akiko Sasaki, Chizuko Sato, Mami Yamaguchi, and Ryohei Konta of IDE also participated in the project as observers. Their opinions and comments helped me to organize my thoughts. Yukihito Sato introduced me to Ming-sho Ho of National Taiwan University, and he also translated Ming-sho Ho’s manuscript on Taiwan (Chapter 2) into Japanese. During the peer-review process, he handled the sensitive and major exchanges with Ming-sho Ho regarding the reviewers’ comments.
In 2022, the first year of the study, three speakers, Professors Kosuke Mizuno (Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University), Yasuhito Asami (Hosei University), and Kim Mijin (Daito Bunka University) gave lectures on the labor movements in Indonesia, Thailand, and South Korea, respectively, and the following year, Professor Toru Shinoda (Waseda University) gave a lecture on the labor movements in developed countries, particularly in the United States. Professor Shinoda, a leading scholar of trade unionism and labor movements in Japan, subsequently participated in the research project as an observer and provided comments and advice from a broad perspective.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has come to an end, we were unfortunately unable to conduct as much field work as we had hoped. Nevertheless, during interviews in Bangladesh in 2023 and in Sri Lanka in 2024, trade union leaders and others generously shared their knowledge and experiences with us. In publishing this book, we also received comments and advice from two anonymous reviewers, assistance from Kenji Ikegami, the editorial staff of the Academic Information Center at IDE, and statistical materials from Marie Kobayashi, the librarian at IDE Library. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who supported us in publishing this book. Kindly note that the book’s contents are current as of January 2024 unless noted otherwise.
As was the case with my previous editorial work, this book is published mainly as an eBook. The publication can be downloaded in the EPUB and PDF formats and can also be printed out. The paper version (print-on-demand, POD) of the publication can be purchased through Amazon, Rakuten Books, and Sanseido Bookstore on Demand. Although the title of this book includes “Asia,” it does not contain studies on the two major Asian powers, China and India. This is because these two countries were discussed in our previous book “New Labor Movements” in Emerging Economies. Interested readers are encouraged to refer to that work. Today in Japan, research on labor movements in emerging and developing economies is an area that is hardly given any attention. I hope that further research on labor movements in these countries will be undertaken in Japan.
Editor
September 2024