1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910811895503321

Autore

Song Jiyeoun <1975->

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca : , : Cornell University Press, , [2014]

©2014

ISBN

0-8014-7100-1

0-8014-7101-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (248 p.)

Disciplina

331.120952

Soggetti

Labor market - Japan

Labor market - Korea (South)

Manpower policy - Japan

Manpower policy - Korea (South)

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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.