A sewing factory in eastern Japan required an Indonesian Muslim trainee to sign a note promising to forgo praying five times a day and Ramadan fasting as a condition of her employment, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.
The firm also prohibited her from owning a cell phone and exchanging letters.
The Justice Ministry suspect the firm’s practice infringes on the woman’s human rights in violation of its guidelines for accepting trainees, which is based on the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
According to the note written both in Japanese and Indonesian, the factory prohibited the woman from worshipping on the firm’s property and fasting while in Japan.
She was also prohibited from exchanging letters domestically, sending money to her family or traveling in vehicles.
In addition, she had a curfew of 9 p.m. at her dormitory and was not allowed to invite friends there.
TozenAdmin
Gov’t looks to open up pension plan to part-time workers
The ruling coalition and government are discussing the possibility of allowing part-timers who work for an employer for more than a certain period to join the pension system, sources said.
Currently, companies are obliged to pay a half of pension premiums for their part-time employees who work more than 30 hours a week [sic].
Earlier, officials of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare tried to make some 3 million people eligible for the pension system by cutting the required hours of work to more than 20 hours a week. But those in the distribution industry, which employ many part-timers, were so vehemently opposed to the plan that the ministry dropped the idea.
But now Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly wants to allow more people to join the pension plan, prompting government and ruling coalition officials to discuss the idea of allowing part-timers who work for a certain period, probably more than one year, to join the system.
Under the idea, part-timers who work more than 20 hours a week for less than 12 months will probably be excluded from the pension system, sources said.
Currently, companies are required to pay half of pension premiums for full-time employees who work more than two months for a company.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20061114p2a00m0na006000c.html
Chinese trainees flee poor work conditions
Three Chinese women working in a training program fled their workplace in Aomori Prefecture early Monday and contacted labor authorities to complain of poor conditions, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned.
The trainees came to Japan two years ago and have worked at a small sewing factory in Misawa in the prefecture.
The three women complained of working 13 hours a day, with their overtime pay falling short of the stipulated minimum wage, and rarely being allowed to use heaters even in midwinter at the company dormitory, which is a refurbished garage.
The three told the Yomiuri they could not bear the situation any longer with winter approaching.
Just after 5 a.m., the three trainees, each carrying an overnight bag, ran from the dormitory in front of the factory to a car driven by a member of a Fukui-based organization supporting foreign workers.
About two months before, the three telephoned the organization, after reading about it in a Chinese newspaper, and made plans to flee.
One of the trainees, a 32-year-old woman from Shanghai, said: “I came to Japan to earn money. I’ve been a migrant worker at sewing plants in Saipan and the United Arab Emirates, but I wasn’t treated this badly.”
Firms face foreign hire disclosure
The government plans to make it mandatory, and no longer voluntary, that all companies in Japan report details about noncitizens when employing or dismissing them, in order to prevent an increase in illegal employment, officials said Thursday.
The details will include the names, nationalities and visa status and duration. Employers who fail to make such reports or file false reports may be fined up to 300,000 yen. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare will draft an employment promotion law amendment to this effect to submit to the Diet during the ordinary session in the first half of next year, they said.
Hello Work violated temp staff law
Sixteen Hello Work job-placement offices under the jurisdiction of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s Osaka Labor Bureau have allowed employees from two organizations to engage in work performed by Hello Work offices, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Tuesday.
The employees of the Employment and Human Resources Development Organization of Japan (EHDO), an independent administrative institution in Yokohama, and the Association of Employment Development for Senior Citizens (JEED) in Tokyo, reportedly engaged in such duties as reception work and counseling for job-seekers on behalf of the Hello Work employees.
Treating employees from the two organizations as temporary workers for Hello Work without any contracts violates the Temporary Staffing Services Law. However, it has become a common practice…Hiroyuki Ito, of the bureau’s employment security section, said the incident was regrettable because office employees lack awareness of the law, although they work for public offices responsible for labor issues.
Japan must do more to accept, aid refugees: U.S. NGO reps
… Japan granted refugee status to 46 asylum- seekers in 2005, a record high since 1983.
Although this pales in comparison with the approximately 70,000 admitted as refugees and granted asylum by the U.S. in 2005, [Jana] Mason [deputy director of government relations for International Rescue Committee, a major U.S. nongovernmental organization] called the number a considerable step forward for Japan, which had granted refugee status to only 49 people during the entire 1990s.
According to Mason, the appropriate number of refugees a country should admit must be based on its size and population as well as the number of applicants. But there is no magic number, and it is estimated there are 11 million refugees worldwide.
Gov’t to review job training program for foreigners
The labor ministry kicked off studies at an expert panel Wednesday to review a job training program for foreign workers criticized as exploiting them under poor working conditions. The ministry set up the panel, chaired by Gakushuin University professor Koichiro Imano, in the wake of nearly 2,000 foreign trainees fleeing from the program a year.
Plaintiff gets redress but not for racial bias
A black American man won a partial victory Wednesday in a discrimination suit against a shopkeeper who had barred his entry, when the Osaka High Court ruled that the defendant’s action was illegal, but not racially biased despite his stated bigotry, and awarded the plaintiff 350,000 yen.
In overturning the lower court ruling, the high court ordered optical shop owner Takashi Narita to pay 350,000 yen in compensation to Steve McGowan, 42. McGowan had sued for racial discrimination over an incident that occurred outside the shop in September 2004.
Ratio of dispatch workers to regular employees rises to 12.4%
The ratio of dispatched workers to regular corporate employees in Japan came to 12.4% last year, more than double the figure eight years ago, a government survey showed Monday. The data, compiled by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, indicated corporate Japan is increasingly incorporating temporary workers to cut personnel costs following 1999 deregulation in the labor dispatch service field.
8,340 foreign trainees missing / Bureau says many on program forced to work excessive hours for low pay
An investigation last year by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry on companies using the trainees found that 731 firms, or about 80 percent, were making them work very long hours for low pay, in violation of the Labor Standards Law and the Minimum Wages Law.