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In Our Unions, Our Selves, Anne Zacharias-Walsh provides an in-depth look at the rise of women-only unions in Japan, an organizational analysis of the challenges these new unions face in practice, and a firsthand account of the ambitious, occasionally contentious, and ultimately successful international solidarity project that helped to spark a new feminist labor movement.In the early 1990s, as part of a larger wave of union reform efforts in Japan, women began creating their own women-only labor unions to confront long-standing gender inequality in the workplace and in traditional enterprise unions. These new unions soon discovered that the demand for individual assistance and help at the bargaining table dramatically exceeded the rate at which the unions could recruit and train members to meet that demand. Within just a few years, women-only unions were proving to be both the most effective option women had for addressing problems on the job and in serious danger of dying out because of their inability to grow their organizational capacity.Zacharias-Walsh met up with Japanese women's unions at a critical moment in their struggle to survive. Recognizing the benefits of a cross-national dialogue, they teamed up to host a multiyear international exchange project that brought together U.S. and Japanese activists and scholars to investigate the links between organizational structure and the day-to-day problems nontraditional unions face, and to develop Japan-specific participatory labor education as a way to organize and empower new generations of members. They also gained valuable insights into the fine art of building and maintaining the kinds of collaborative, cross border relationships that are essential to today’s social justice movements, from global efforts to save the environment to the Fight for $15 and Black Lives Matter.
Anne Zacharias-Walsh is an activist and writer who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She has worked with progressive labor unions and social justice organizations and campaigns throughout the United States and Japan for more than twenty-five years.
"Our Unions, Our Selves is well conceived, organized, and written. Anne Zacharias-Walsh presents new information on women-only unions and also advances theoretical discussion on how women can organize to improve their material well-being. It will be of great interest to readers outside its intended audience of unionists, activists, and students."
Akira Suzuki, Hosei University, editor of Cross-National Comparisons of Social Movement Unionism: Diversities of Labour Movement Revitalization in Japan, Korea and the United States:
"Anne Zacharias-Walsh's account of women’s unions in Japan and the interactions of women activists with their U.S. counterparts sheds light on two largely overlooked aspects of the Japanese labor movement: the labor activism of working women and individually affiliated unions."
Steve Early, former organizer, Communications Workers of America, author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress:
"Trade unions in Japan, like their counterparts in America, face the challenge of organizing workers long excluded from collective bargaining because they're low-income, part-timers, or independent contractors. Anne Zacharias-Walsh shows how Japanese feminists tackled this problem by creating new community-based labor formations. Both the setbacks and success of these organizations provide important lessons for workers’ center activists and alternative union builders in our country."
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