Japan & US - No submarine building Unions? But the Most Efficient?

I’ve been doing a bit of research on  Japanese and US submarine building industries.

Japan has built submarines almost uninterrupted since 1906. That interruption occurring 1945-1957 when Japan was devastated by bombs and a US submarine blockade.

Japan has two large submarine building companies:

-  the conglomerate Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) (see a MHI built submarine), and

-  Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation (KSC) of the KHI conglomerate, See a Kawasaki submarine website.

They form a submarine building duopoly in the port city of Kobe, with each company continuous building one submarine every two years with launches occurring alternatly and rigidly every October to December. For the on-time, on-budget, schedule see the SORYU-Oyashio TABLE.

The structure of Japanese shipbuilding unions is quite complex, starting with likely extinct Japanese shipbuilding union "Zenzosen". Ztev Konrad advises (comments 25/4/17 8:12 AM below) from Wikipedia "Zenzōsen [the All Japan Shipbuilding and Engineering Union] is a federation of individual, enterprise-level unions - the normal model of trades unionism in Japan. It was initially the dominant union in the Japanese shipbuilding industry, but was [dissolved on September 9, 2016] eventually eclipsed by the Jūki Rōren (Japanese Federation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Workers' Unions). Zenzōsen was the more militant of the two unions, and was more strongly represented at the smaller shipyards. Zenzōsen was affiliated to the Japanese Socialist Party." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenz%C5%8Dsen "Pete was on the right track with likely company unions dominating the sub shipyards."

In that direction S advises (comments 25/4/17 9:24 PM) that there are two worker’s unions (KHI Worker’s Union, Federation of Worker’s Union of the KHI Group of companies). The KHI Worker’s Union consists of 9 branches. Workers of KHI Kobe Shipyard belong to KHI Kobe branch.

S continues that information on MHI workers’s unions is not clear. Workers of MHI's Kobe Shipyard belong to the MHI Kobe Shipbuilding Branch.

The workers’s unions of KHI and MHI both belong to the Japanese Federation of Basic Industry Worker’s Union (JBU). JBU is an industrial union confederation of 400 worker’s unions with 251,965 members (source is Japanese wikipedia)."

I am guessing the submarine building workforces of MHI and KSC are around 1,000 each (2,000 total). Perhaps the Japanese Ministry of Defense and ATLA (a sub example) have 1,000 staff total dedicated to submarine research, contracts, production and availability?

Along with the US Japan might be the most efficient submarine builder in the world. This comes from:

1.  duopoly conditions (a government can always favour the competing company)

2.  continuous build (Japan building one SSK every year and the US building 1 to 2 SSNs)

3.  long runs of submarines with relatively few changes eg. few differences between the 10 Soryu
     Mk. 1s (see TABLE) and between the first 39! Los Angeles SSNs, and

4,  only building subs for one customer (US or Japanese) in their own navies.

Or perhaps other counties are more efficient by other measures such as:
-  country A achieving greater economies of scale, through production for foreigners, than A's 
   domestic demand can provide, or
-  raising foreign exchange through sales to foreign customers.

It takes the large, wealthy US economy to build an SSN or two each year (and eventually one Columbia class SSBN as well). The USSR used to churn out nuclear submarines at that rate but this was a major contributor to the ruination of its economy. China still cannot afford it or is dissatisfied with its SSNs' quality, prefering to mass produce SSKs instead.

A Japanese Soryu submarine being launched, with much fanfare, in Kobe.

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A Virginia class SSN under construction at Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc - Newport News. Note the propulsor about a mile back, in the distance :)

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Pete