Cross-posted from the General Union
After more than six months of union action, Interac and Tokai Board of Education have been found guilty of illegal dispatch by the Aichi Prefectural Labor Board. Watch this space – full story in the coming weeks.
TozenAdmin
Foreigners rally over job security
Hundreds of foreign and Japanese people staged a rally Sunday in Tokyo demanding better working conditions and employment benefits for foreign residents.
At the annual “March in March” event at Hibiya Park in Chiyoda Ward, Louis Carlet, deputy general secretary of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, said foreign workers have a great need for job security and health care.
“It’s difficult to be a foreigner in any country. But it’s much more difficult when you don’t have job security, when you don’t have health care,” said Carlet, whose union jointly hosted the event with other groups lobbying for improved labor conditions.
One of the biggest problems is that most foreigners are being employed as nonregular workers, and more and more Japanese are being used the same way, he said.
Participants at the rally included people from many different ethnic backgrounds as well as various unions. Organizers said around 400 people took part.
Romsun Pramudito from Indonesia, who chairs the Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Indonesia Youth Association, said more job security should be given to foreigner workers.
“We are working very hard and really contributing to the country,” he said, adding he hopes foreigners receive better treatment. He also said foreigners and Japanese should collaborate to find a solution.
Buddhika Weerasinghe, a Fukui-based freelance photojournalist from Sri Lanka, came to the event because he is interested in the problems foreign workers face in Japan.
Weerasinghe said he has heard from foreign workers in the city of Fukui — many of them Chinese working in garment factories — that some received salary cuts without explanation and even experienced physical harassment. “I feel foreigners working in Japan are facing a lot of problems.”
While hopeful that improvement will accompany the change in government last September, little progress has been made, Carlet said.
“We want the new government to take this issue very seriously and make serious change,” he said.
The event also featured a live music by musicians from various countries, including Senegalese drum sessions and Ainu dancing from Hokkaido.
A march planned after the gathering, however, was called off because of the chilly rain, organizers said.
Cuts in national health insurance premiums for people out of work
Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Akira Nagatsuma has announced cuts in national health insurance premiums for people who have lost their jobs.
Under a new system beginning in April, the yearly national health insurance premium will be decreased for people who lose their jobs, based on their yearly income. For a couple with one child and a yearly income of 5 million yen, the premium will fall from 347,000 yen a year to 148,000 yen a year — a decrease of nearly 200,000 yen.
Since national health insurance premiums are calculated based on the previous year’s income, there have been cases in which people found it impossible to pay high premiums after losing their jobs and source of income, resulting in a loss of health insurance coverage.
In order to lower the premiums for people who lose their jobs, the enforcement order for the National Health Insurance Law will be revised in March, and a bill to revise the Local Tax Law has been submitted at a regular session of the Diet. Under the changes, it will be possible to calculate insurance premiums based on an amount that is 30 percent of the person’s actual wages earned the previous year.
The measures will apply to people who have employment insurance, and who receive an unemployment benefit after losing work through no choice of their own. People can apply to have their premiums reduced at local government offices, and the measure will apply from the day after the person loses work until the end of the next fiscal year.
The reduction in premiums will remain in force for people who become self-employed after losing their jobs and stay in the national health insurance scheme, but if they sign up with national health insurance associations that employees of small- or medium-sized businesses belong to or with company health insurance programs, the reductions will not apply.
Under the measures, people with a yearly income of 10 million yen, for example, will have their premiums reduced from 590,000 yen a year to 283,000 yen. Those on a yearly income of 3 million yen will have their premiums lowered from 233,000 yen a year to 85,000 yen, while those with a yearly income of 1.5 million yen will have the premiums reduced from 134,000 yen a year to 48,000.
Reductions will also apply to people belonging to health insurance associations who move to the national health insurance program after losing their job. Some 870,000 people including the families of people who lose their jobs are expected to use the new system.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100306p2a00m0na009000c.html
New relief on vanished pensions / Guidelines will allow separate records to verify missing payments
A government panel has announced new support measures for victims of the “vanished pension” scandal that will make it easier for people to verify they paid pension premiums for which records are missing, it was learned Friday.
According to the new guidelines, people who have missing records for corporate employees’ pension payments will be able to have their payments verified at local offices of the Japan Pension Service if they bring in records of payments made to employees’ pension funds or company health insurance associations over the same periods.
Employees’ pension funds are a kind of corporate pension. Operated independently, they manage part of the premiums paid into the employees’ pension plan. Such funds pay a portion of pension benefits on behalf of the government, and keep records of the employees’ pension plans.
After officially deciding on the new guideline at the end of this month, the panel will study the possibility of introducing the new system as early as April.
The third-party committee also has handled pension cases that resulted from mistakes made by companies and the Social Insurance Agency, including people whose payment records were missing because they were transferred to different workplaces within their companies. There also have been cases in which the dates on which people were listed as joining and withdrawing from employees’ pension funds were off by just one day.
Foreigners get nod to skip social insurance
The Immigration Bureau announced Wednesday new guidelines for foreign residents, stating that joining the social insurance system is not a requirement for renewing or changing one’s visa status.
The bureau told The Japan Times on Feb. 1 that it had decided to change the wording of the new guidelines — which were originally drawn up last March and scheduled to take effect April 1 — to ease concerns that those without social insurance would be forced to choose between losing their visa and joining the insurance system.
The original version of the guidelines said foreign residents must present their health insurance card when reporting changes to or renewing their residential status.
The wording has now been revised to read:”In order to promote signing up for social insurance, we will ask (foreign residents) to present their health insurance card starting April 1. We will not reject renewal or change of visa status for failing to present the card.”
Immigration Bureau official Aiko Oumi said, “We just want to persuade foreigners to join the social insurance, but we heard from many people that the original version sounded like having social insurance is a requirement.”
In some cases, employers [violate the law by not enrolling] their foreign employees [in] the social insurance system to cut costs.
Average wages mark 1st rise in 20 months
Average monthly wages including overtime pay at companies with more than five employees rose to 273,142 yen in January, up 0.1 percent from a year earlier, marking the first yearly increase in 20 months, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, average hours worked, including overtime and worked holidays, reached 136.7 hours per month, up 0.3 percent, marking the first yearly increase in 18 months, supporting the view that the economy is picking up, according to a preliminary report produced by the ministry.
In particular, overtime worked by those in the manufacturing sector–a key barometer in assessing changes in economic trends–rose 30.1 percent to 12.1 hours.
Overtime working hours rose 3.4 percent from a year earlier to 9.4 hours.
Health insurance nixed as visa renewal condition
The Immigration Bureau has effectively scrapped a guideline that compelled foreign residents to present health insurance cards when applying to extend visa status, it has been learned.
The new guideline, due to be enforced on April 1, states it would have requested non-Japanese to enroll in the social insurance system and present health insurance cards at the application window when reporting changes in their status of residence or when renewing visas.
But the newly revised immigration guideline also states that failing to present health insurance cards would not adversely affect decisions by the bureau on the issues of changing residence status or renewing visas. [Japanese as well as] non-Japanese are required by law to enroll in the social insurance system.
Police crack down on legal workers who help foreigners illegally work in Japan
Law enforcers are stepping up their crackdown on administrative scriveners who help foreigners illegally work or get falsely married in Japan, officials said.
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has set up a liaison council with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the Justice Ministry’s Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau to deal with the matter.
Since 2006, the MPD has arrested at least five administrative scriveners for helping foreigners illegally obtain work visas in Japan in violation of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law.
However, a senior investigator with the MPD admits that it has been forced to abandon forming a case against many others suspected of filing false applications for work visas on behalf of foreigners, because they denied that their clients were seeking false applications.
To deal with the situation, the MPD is trying to invoke a law to regulate the work of administrative scriveners.
Many administrative scriveners who are suspected of involvement in false applications fail to preserve documents recording the names and addresses of their clients and the amounts of fees they receive from their clients, even though the law requires them to do so. Violators face a fine of up to 1 million yen.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100302p2a00m0na006000c.html
Security for dispatch workers
The labor ministry last month asked an advisory body to discuss possible revisions to the law governing the dispatch of temporary contract workers. The Hatoyama administration hopes to improve the stability of dispatch workers’ employment situation, and plans to send a bill containing revisions to the Diet in March.
According to a ministry draft of the revision bill, the current temp system, which sees registered workers go without pay when there is no work to occupy them, will be banned in principle. Exceptions will be made for 26 fields of work that require specialized skills, such as interpreting. The draft proposes that the ban be phased in over a period of up to five years.
The draft also calls for dispatch on assignments lasting two months or less to be prohibited in principle, and for temp agencies to be obliged to make their commission margins public.
Dispatch of workers to manufacturing firms will also be banned in principle. Again, there will be a phasing-in period of up to three years before the ban is enforced. However, dispatch of registered workers to manufacturing firms will still be allowed if the workers receive pay continuously for more than one year, even if there is no actual work available.
The labor side says that the revisions will not prevent workers being dispatched to manufacturing firms on short-term, renewable contracts. Labor also questions why unskilled work such as filing and office machine operation is covered in the 26 “specialized” fields.
[The advisory body’s] main objective should be to prevent a situation in which dispatched workers can be easily and suddenly laid off in times of economic downturn. Legislation aside, management should realize that continuing to rely heavily on dispatch workers inhibits the accumulation of skills and know-how among staff, thus weakening a firm’s ability to compete in the long term.
DPJ postpones bill to grant local voting rights to permanent foreign residents
The government has abandoned proposing a bill to grant local voting rights to permanent foreign residents in Japan during the current Diet session, in the face of intense opposition from coalition partner People’s New Party (PNP).
“It’s extremely difficult for the government to sponsor such a bill due to differences over the issue between the ruling coalition partners,” said Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi.
Now, the attention is focused on whether ruling and opposition parties will launch a campaign to pass the bill as legislator-initiated legislation.
The suffrage bill was expected to be based on a draft that the DPJ prepared before it took over the reins of government, and it proposes to grant local suffrage to foreign residents from countries with which Japan has diplomatic ties. The DPJ’s proposal will cover some 420,000 Korean and other special permanent residents — both those who arrived in Japan before World War II and their offspring — as well as about 490,000 foreign residents from other countries.
The campaign to enact legislation on foreign suffrage in local elections dates back to 15 years ago.
Encouraged by the 1995 Supreme Court ruling that “foreign suffrage is not banned by the Constitution,” over 1,500 local assemblies adopted a resolution to support and promote legislation to grant local suffrage to permanent foreign residents in Japan — some 910,000 people as of the end of 2008.
However, as the passage of the bill becomes a real possibility along with the change of government, various views have emerged.
The National Association of Chairpersons of Prefectural Assemblies held an interparty discussion meeting on local suffrage for permanent foreign residents on Feb. 9 in Tokyo.
“It’s not the time for national isolation,” said Azuma Konno, a House of Councillors member of the DPJ, as he explained the party’s policy on the legislation at the meeting, raising massive jeers and objections from participants.
“We can introduce legislation which will make it easier for foreigners to be naturalized,” said Kazuyoshi Hatakeyama, speaker of the Miyagi Prefectural Assembly, while Kochi Prefectural Assembly Vice Speaker Eiji Morita countered, saying: “The DPJ excluded the suffrage bill from its manifesto for last summer’s election.”
The Mie Prefectural Assembly, in which DPJ members form the largest political group, was the only chapter to support the granting of local suffrage to permanent foreign residents.
“The argument against suffrage rings of ethnic nationalism,” said Speaker Tetsuo Mitani.
The fact that the DPJ’s legislation plan met with strong opposition during the meeting highlighted the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s strong sway over local assemblies, where its members manage to remain as the largest political group.
Opponents of the bill argue that it is unreasonable for the central government to make decisions on regional electoral systems while pledging to promote decentralization of authority. Furthermore, the national association of chairpersons adopted a special resolution calling on the government to focus more on the opinions of local assemblies on Jan. 21.
During the LDP Policy Research Council’s national meeting on Feb. 10, LDP lawmakers instructed its prefectural chapters to promote resolutions opposing foreign suffrage at respective local assemblies, in a bid to undermine the Hatoyama administration and the DPJ in cooperation with regional politics.
According to the chairpersons’ association, before the change of government last summer, a total of 34 prefectures supported the granting of local suffrage to foreign residents; however, eight reversed their positions after the DPJ came into power. The trend is expected to accelerate further, pointing to antagonism between the nation’s two largest political parties, as well as the conflicts between the DPJ-led national government and local governments.
The Chiba Prefectural Assembly, which adopted the resolution supporting foreign suffrage in 1999, reversed its position in December last year.
“We cannot believe they overturned their own decision,” said an official at Mindan’s Chiba Prefecture branch. The branch, which has a close relationship with LDP lawmakers, had owed the prefecture’s previous decision to support the suffrage bill to the efforts of LDP members in the prefectural assembly.
The Ibaraki Prefectural Assembly, too, is one of the eight local assemblies that went from for to against suffrage. Mindan’s Ibaraki branch has also expressed its disappointment, saying: “Assembly members are using the issue as part of their campaign strategy for the coming election.”
According to the National Diet Library, foreign residents are granted local suffrage in most major developed countries.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100227p2a00m0na009000c.html