News

Prada accused of maltreatment

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Boss wanted ‘old, fat, ugly’ out: manager

A senior manager at Prada Japan has filed a legal complaint against the Italian fashion label, accusing the company of harassment and discrimination based on appearance and alleging it maltreated other employees in the past.

Last May, Prada Japan CEO Davide Sesia visited some of the 40 Prada shops in Japan with Rina Bovrisse, its senior retail manager. Afterward, he asked her to “eliminate” about 15 shop managers and assistant managers he described as being “old, fat, ugly, disgusting or not having the Prada look,” Bovrisse said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.

Tokyo-based lawyer Reiko Shiratori, who specializes mainly in workplace harassment cases, said it would be illegal even for a luxury fashion house to order the dismissal, demotion or unfavorable transfer of a worker on the grounds of physical appearance because that isn’t the only relevant job requirement.

Bovrisse said she is taking this opportunity to raise the issue of harassment against women in the workplace because she wants to improve their working environment.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100312a2.html

70 immigration detainees on hunger strike

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Fast in Osaka tied to denial of release: activists

At least 70 detainees at the West Japan Immigration Control Center, which has long been criticized by human rights groups and Diet members, have been on a hunger strike since Monday, center officials and volunteers helping them confirmed Thursday.

“Around 70 foreigners began a hunger strike Monday night because they want to be released on a temporary basis,” Norifumi Kishida, an official at the center, said Thursday morning. The center, in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, is providing food but they are refusing to eat, he said.

Hiromi Sano, a human rights activist involved with immigration issues who has been meeting with detainees over the past few days, said some hunger strikers have applied for refugee status.

“They are demanding to know why their applications for release from the center were rejected, even though their refugee claims are being reviewed administratively or judicially, with support from lawyers and legal assistance workers,” she said.

Reports of detainee abuse and harsh conditions at the West Japan Immigration Control Center go back at least a decade. According to an investigation by Kyodo News, 23 detainees at the center had attempted suicide between 2000 and 2004.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100312a1.html

Foreigners rally over job security

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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.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100308a2.html

Cuts in national health insurance premiums for people out of work

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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

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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.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20100306TDY02303.htm

Foreigners get nod to skip social insurance

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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.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100304a1.html

Average wages mark 1st rise in 20 months

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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.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T100303007611.htm

Health insurance nixed as visa renewal condition

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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.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20100304TDY02308.htm

Police crack down on legal workers who help foreigners illegally work in Japan

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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

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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.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20100302a1.html