Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus

The Nambu FWC is a special status organization within the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu. Its objectives include promoting the welfare of foreign and Japanese workers in the Kanto region of Japan, and enhancing the internationalization of Japan and its integration in the global community by promoting human rights, professional development and working conditions of all workers in the Kanto region, regardless of nationality.

National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu

The National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu (Nambu), is, as its name suggests, a union which does not restrict membership to those working in any one industry, trade or workplace.

The union has a long history; almost as long as the history of legalized organised labour in Japan.

The union’s current membership numbers several thousand workers in the southern area of Tokyo. About a quarter of these members are foreign nationals. NUGW Tokyo Nambu is one of only three or four general unions in the Tokyo area which has a large number of foreign workers.

Although NUGW Tokyo Nambu doesn’t restrict membership, it is true to say that it has developed areas of concentration and specialisation. Regarding the Japanese members of the union, the publishing sector is a field employing many. With the non-Japanese members, foreign language teaching is the area in which the great majority are employed.

The labour movement in Japan is currently fractured into three major blocks: RENGO, ZENROREN and ZENROKYO. NUGW Tokyo Nambu is within the ZENROKYO group. To complicate matters, there are also unions sharing the same or similar English and Japanese names in RENGO and ZENROREN. The reason for this being the fact that until the late 1980s, almost all unions were part of one block: SOHYO. When SOHYO was broken up, individual unions also broke apart and each fragment claimed the right to take its name with it into its new affiliation.

The smallest branchhas just three members; while the largest has over 400. The branches oversee the day-to-day affairs of the union at each workplace. Each chapter negotiates with the employers regarding annual salary working conditions. It is only when a chapter encounters trouble or needs special assistance that the staff of NUGW Tokyo Nambu central office step in.

Chapter unions are brought together in a number of ways. Firstly, the Executive Committee of NUGW Tokyo Nambu�has about 20 positions and members of many different chapters are well represented. Second, there are regular scheduled meetings for representatives of all chapters to come together. Newsletters, postal mailouts, e-mailings and Internet web pages are other ways in which information and experiences are shared. There are also plenty of social events organised by the union, where members of different branches can meet.

NUGW Tokyo Nambu is a fighting union! That means that the union is willing to engage in industrial action in pursuit of its aims. In the case of dispute cases, the union wlll use any and all legal means at its disposal (such as engaging in strikes, rallies and leafletings, filing injunctions and dispute cases at the Labour Commission and Tokyo District Court), to achieve victory. This cannot be said of all unions in Japan, however.