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Overwork death recognized for worker at Fukushima plant

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The death last May of a man who had engaged in work at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after the nuclear crisis erupted there in March was recognized Friday as caused by overwork, according to a lawyer representing the man’s bereaved family.

A local labor standards inspection office in Yokohama, acting on a workers’ compensation claim by the family of [a subcontract worker dispatched by a construction firm in Shizuoka Prefecture], who died of a heart attack at age 60, determined that his cardiac infarction was caused by excessive physical and mental burdens arising from working overnight wearing protective gear and mask, lawyer Akio Ohashi said.

There have been 35 cases of workers’ compensation claims in connection with the nuclear disaster, and three of them involve a worker’s death. Aside from [that worker’s] case, the two others involved workers who died due to tsunami waves on the day of the disaster.

Nonregulars at record 35.2% of workforce

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The ratio of nonregular workers in the labor force in 2011 hit a record average high of 35.2 percent, excluding [Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima] the three prefectures severely affected by the March quake and tsunami, up 0.8 point from 2010, according to data compiled by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.

The average for the year hit a record for the second straight year, the ministry said Monday.

The rise appears to have stemmed from the growing tendency of firms to hire fewer young people as regular workers and rehire veteran workers on a contract basis after their retirement.

By age bracket, the ratio of nonregular workers came to a record 32.6 percent among people aged between 15 and 34, while that among workers aged 55 and over was 51.5 percent, also an all-time high, the ministry said.

Nonregular workers aged between 15 and 34 numbered 1.7 million, up 20,000, it said.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nb20120222a3.html

Falsified labor deals rampant at Japan’s nuke plants, says suspect

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A power plant construction and maintenance firm has falsified worker contracts for temporary labor at nuclear plants across Japan for years, according to statements by one of the company’s employees charged with involvement in the fraudulent agreements.

Hideo Ichise, 58, and two other people were indicted on Feb. 2 for the dispatch of a worker to the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture under a false contract, a violation of the Employment Security Law. Ichise’s employer Taihei Dengyo Kaisha Ltd. — where he now serves as business manager after a stint as the firm’s Oi operations chief — along with Fukui Prefecture-based plumbing company Takada Kiko were also charged.

Investigators have discovered a dossier on falsified worker contracts at more than 30 Taihei Dengyo branches, further suggesting the firm has been involved in illicit labor deals involving nuclear power plants across the country.

Police have furthermore discovered cases of various personnel agencies siphoning off the wages of temporary workers at nuclear plants, while involvement of the Kitakyushu-based crime syndicate Kudo-kai has also been uncovered.

Taihei Dengyo’s operating officer was also quoted as telling police, “Our company alone cannot hire many workers, so we (falsified labor contracts) knowing it was illegal.”

[One worker in Saga Prefecture] was dispatched to a construction company by a temp agent called simply “boss.” Although there was ostensibly a contract with the construction company and the man worked directly under a construction company employee, “boss” apparently took 5,000 yen out of his 13,000-yen daily wage.

“There were gangsters among those bosses, and sometimes two bosses raked off my wages,” the Saga man recalls.

A temporary personnel agency operator says, “Parent companies send us requests for a certain number of workers, and we submit a list of people who then go and work under those parent companies at nuclear power plants. We give the workers their wages after deducting our share.” Another agent told the Mainichi, “There are times when gangsters are involved in recruiting workers. It is easy for us to hire them because they save us the trouble.”

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120204p2a00m0na016000c.html

Panel says bullying by peers, subordinates also power harassment

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A government panel studying measures to combat bullying at work recommended Monday that harassment by peers and subordinates be included in definitions of power harassment in the workplace.

In the government’s first proposal to define power harassment, often associated with abuse of power by bosses, the panel said in its report that power harassment could occur not only between people in different hierarchical positions but when there are gaps in expertise in specialized fields such as information technology.

The number of consultations related to bullying or harassment at work brought to the attention of the ministry’s regional labor departments across the country has increased from about 6,600 cases in fiscal 2002 to around 40,000 in fiscal 2010.

The report said there are six types of power harassment — physical attacks such as assault, mental attacks such as threats, ignoring or leaving someone out of the loop, burdening someone with excessive work, deliberately giving someone very little work to do and prying into someone’s personal affairs.

The working group determined there is a need to expand the definition of power harassment as it found from interviews with companies and the examination of litigation that there are a growing number of cases in which workers are continually ignored by peers and where younger employees well-versed in IT harass people in more senior positions who are less knowledgeable.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120131p2g00m0dm019000c.html

外国人労働者、５％増の68万人　10月

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厚生労働省は27日、2011年10月時点での外国人雇用の届け出状況を発表した。外国人労働者数は68万6246人となり、届け出ベースで前年比5.6％増えた。東日本大震災の復旧需要などを背景に製造業などで短期雇用に就く外国人が増えたとみられる。

外国人労働者を雇っていると届け出た事業所数は前年比7.2％増の11万6561カ所。働く人を国籍別にみると、中国が29万7199人と最も多く全体の43.3％を占めた。産業別では製造業が最も多い26万5330人となり、全体の38.7％だった。

07年に施行した改正雇用対策法に基づき、日本で働く外国人の状況を集計した。同法はすべての事業主が外国人労働者を雇った場合はハローワークに届け出るよう義務付けている。

http://www.nikkei.com/news/category/article/g=96958A9C93819481E0E5E2E08B8DE0E5E2E3E0E2E3E09797E3E2E2E2;at=DGXZZO0195588008122009000000

3 nabbed over fake contract for nuclear repair work in Fukui

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Police have arrested three people for allegedly dispatching a worker to the Oi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture under a falsified contract, sparking a police probe into the yakuza’s possible involvement in nuclear-related jobs, investigative sources say.

The Fukuoka and Fukui prefectural police forces on Jan. 12 announced the arrests of Hideo Ichise, 58, of Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, Yoshimi Tomita, 59, of Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture, and Kanae Ikegami, 36, of Kitakyushu’s Wakamatsu Ward, on suspicion of violating the Employment Security Law.

Police suspect Soshin Kogyo dispatched workers to nuclear power facilities, thereby providing the Kudo-kai [a Kitakyushu-based crime syndicate] with a source of funds, according to investigative sources. The case has sparked a rare police investigation into the alleged involvement of yakuza in nuclear-related employment in Japan.

According to police investigators, the three were implicated in an unlawful contract scheme in which a male employee of Soshin Kogyo was dispatched to Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi plant and forced to engage in repair work under the supervision of Taihei Dengyo from early March to late September in 2010. The three have admitted to the allegations, the sources say.

Fukuoka police and others with knowledge of the case say the fake contract was set up through deals between Soshin Kogyo and Takada Kiko, and between Takada Kiko and Taihei Dengyo. The Fukuoka and Fukui police forces believe the Soshin Kogyo employee served as a temporary worker in violation of the law, and suspect he may be just one of several temporary staffers sent to nuclear power facilities under bogus contract deals, investigative sources say.

Various temporary agencies have been suspected of siphoning off workers’ wages and crime syndicates are suspected of playing a part in dispatching such temporary workers.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120113p2a00m0na015000c.html

Language hurdle trips up Indonesian nurses

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More than half of 104 Indonesian nurses who came to Japan in 2008 through a bilateral economic partnership agreement to obtain nursing licenses have returned home, due mainly to difficulties meeting Japanese language requirements, it has been learned.

Through the EPA program, Indonesian nurses have been allowed to work in Japanese hospitals for three years as assistant nurses who take care of inpatients. They are all licensed nurses in Indonesia. The program requires they pass an annual national nursing certification test during their three-year stay.

When the first batch arrived in 2008, the national exam was severely criticized, as non-Japanese applicants were disadvantaged by their difficulty in reading complex kanji used in the exam.

For example, the word “jokuso” (bedsore), which is difficult to read even for a Japanese if it is written in kanji, appeared in the exam.

The criticism prompted the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry to simplify the exam last year. The ministry put kana alongside difficult kanji to indicate their pronunciation.

However, Indonesian nurses were discouraged by another aspect of the EPA program. As assistant nurses, they were not allowed to conduct medical treatments such as drip infusions and injections, treatments they had engaged in as licensed nurses in Indonesia.

In Japan, they were primarily in charge of services such as table setting and bathing inpatients. After leaving Japan, most of them found new jobs in medical institutions in Indonesia.

The government has an EPA program with the Philippines, through which Filipino nurses are able to work in Japan. It plans to introduce a similar scheme with Vietnam.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120104004687.htm

Japan to start grading skilled foreign workers in spring

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The government announced Wednesday that it will start grading skilled foreign workers this spring and granting those with higher marks preferential treatment amid intensifying international competition for human resources.

Justice Minister Hideo Hiraoka told a press conference that he hopes an increase in foreign workers with high-level skills will help to complement Japan’s workforce.

Under the new system, the government will classify professions into three categories — academic research, work requiring highly specialized skills, and management and administration.

It will award up to 30 points to people with doctoral or masters degrees, and up to 25 points to specialists based on the length of their working experience.

Those who obtain 70 points will receive preferential treatment, such as securing a permanent visa if they reside in Japan for around five years in principle, shorter than the current 10 years, and their spouses will also be allowed to work in Japan, the ministry said.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111228p2g00m0dm068000c.html

Immigration changes to come as new law takes effect in July

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The revised immigration law will take effect next July 9 and the government will start accepting applications for new residence registration cards on Jan. 13, the Cabinet decided Tuesday, paving the way for increased government scrutiny through a centralized immigration control of foreign nationals.

The current alien registration cards, overseen by local municipalities, will be replaced with the cards issued by the central government.

According to the Justice Ministry, foreign residents can apply for the new card at their nearest regional immigration office beginning Jan. 13 but won’t receive it until July. However, valid alien registration certificates will be acceptable until the cardholder’s next application for a visa extension takes place.

At that point, the old card will be replaced with the new residence card, which will have a special embedded IC chip to prevent counterfeiting.

The government claims that centralized management of data on foreign residents will allow easier access to all personal information of the cardholder, such as type of visa, home address and work address, and in return enable officials to more conveniently provide services for legal aliens.

For example, documented foreigners will have their maximum period of stay extended to five years instead of the current three years. Re-entry to Japan will also be allowed without applying for a permit as long as the time away is less than a year, according to the Justice Ministry.

Permanent residents, meanwhile, will have to apply for a new residence card within three years from July 2012. Required materials necessary for an application have not been determined yet.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111221a5.html

Four years after ‘Nova shock,’ eikaiwa is down but not out

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Ask any ordinary person what significance Oct. 26 holds and you might find them struggling for an answer, but for many involved in Japan’s beleaguered English teaching industry, it was the day the nation’s premier operator fell into administration and took much of the rest of the industry with it.

This year, Nova marked its fourth anniversary of operation following restructuring, and while Louis Carlet, executive president of Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union (Tozen), admits it has been a long time since the collapse, he feels that the English conversation school (eikaiwa) industry as a whole “continues to convulse.”

Carlet is no stranger to the Nova saga, having been a spectator to it from the start of the chain’s public troubles in early 2007 and the eventual bankruptcy to Nova’s restructuring by Nagoya-based holding company G.Communication in the following years.

Although the media at the time asked Carlet for his thoughts on a seemingly daily basis, he admits it was difficult to get a historical perspective on what impact Nova’s collapse would have on the industry.

“One thing I did say during several press conferences was that the business model of profits over people does not work in the long run,” he says.

Once the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry became involved in investigating Nova’s business in 2007, the eikaiwa chain seemingly went from a fully operating business to bankruptcy within months.

During the course of Nova’s downward spiral, the atmosphere at branches took a slightly unusual turn as Nova management, or more specifically then President Nozomu Sahashi, tried to allay instructors’ concerns about delayed payments through bizarrely worded faxes, which instead seemed to have the opposite effect.

Thinking back to those faxes, often referred to as “Jesus memos” for the spiritual metaphors and starry-eyed rhetoric Sahashi utilized, Carlet describes them as “creepy” and says they gave employees the feeling Sahashi “was losing it,” which only further lowered the confidence of everyone involved.

Nova finally collapsed under the weight of its debt on Oct. 26, 2007, though while many knew it was coming, Carlet admits he was surprised to hear that the Nova board had conducted a coup d’etat by holding an emergency meeting without Sahashi in order to fire him and immediately apply for court protection from creditors.

Immediately after, the National General Workers Union (NGWU) [sic] found itself thrust into the difficult position of providing support and advice to Nova’s entire foreign workforce, in addition to dealing with a surge in membership in the hundreds.

The labor group managed to organize the instructors into rallies and visits to the Labor Standards Office, as well as holding seminars to explain the complicated system behind the government’s guarantee that 80 percent of unpaid wages would be repaid in the event of bankruptcy and how to apply for unemployment benefits.

“We did a public relations campaign to make sure everyone in Japan knew how bad it was for unpaid teachers, some of whom had trouble getting food,” explains Carlet, who was then deputy secretary general of NGWU’s Tokyo Nambu branch.

The NGWU attempted to assist instructors in this predicament with a highly publicized “Lesson for Food” program, where private students would compensate an instructor for an impromptu language lesson with a meal instead of the normal tuition fee.

While the union’s intentions behind the initiative were noble, Carlet admits in hindsight that it had the “unintended consequence of lowering the private lesson market rate.”

One senior instructor in western Japan, who chose to remain anonymous for this story, has worked continuously with Nova since years before its restructuring, and witnessed the scaling down of Nova firsthand.

“The old Nova had a hierarchy of supervisors who conducted training and evaluations, called titled instructors, and gave day-to-day feedback on teaching performance,” he explains. “They did not always do the job very well, but as G.education hired so few people, there hardly ever seem to be any lesson observations anymore.”

The instructor describes the current Nova management as “extremely poor,” and while it was not especially good at the old Nova, he feels that the people running the branches now are “much worse.”

“There needs to be a proper system for training and supervising teachers, and while the various companies running Nova want the teachers to get more involved in sales, they have no good ideas about what they want the teachers to do,” he says.

While Nova has managed to pull off the massive feat of restructuring, it is clear that the eikaiwa industry has suffered significant contraction following the collapse, with competing language chain Geos going bankrupt in the middle of 2010.

“The economy is bad and young people’s employment is so unstable that most people have little extra time or money to spend learning a foreign language,” Carlet explains.

Looking to the future, Carlet does not foresee things improving drastically for the eikaiwa industry as a whole, but sees some opportunity for smaller operations.

“To recover, the eikaiwa industry would have to overhaul its business model and take language learning seriously as an educational exercise, treat teachers as long-time careerists and, ultimately, charge more,” he says.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20111220zg.html