… 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.
Immigration Battle Diary
Fundamentally, [Hidenori] Sakanaka [former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau] argues, the issue before Japan is what kind of country it wants to become by the middle of this century: a “big” country or a “small” country. Becoming a Big Country means accepting, by 2050, roughly 20 million immigrants in order to maintain current economic levels of prosperity. The alternative is to become a Small Country, let the population drop to about 100 million, keep most foreigners out, and use robots to do some of the work often done by immigrants elsewhere.
To achieve the goal of becoming a Big Country, Sakanaka advocates the establishment of an Immigration Ministry, a separate government organ with full ministerial powers that would be responsible for all aspects of Japan’s immigration policy, as well as the immigrants themselves once they have arrived and until they have obtained Japanese citizenship. Sakanaka basically favors Japan becoming a Big Country, not just for economic reasons but to serve as the “Canada of Asia”, a multicultural, multiethnic salad bowl of a country where people of all races and creeds can feel comfortable.
The Rise of Migrant Militancy
As organizing campaigns in New York City show, migrant workers are indispensable to the revitalization of the labor movement. As employers turn to migrant labor to fill low-wage jobs, unions must encourage and support organizing drives that emerge from the oppressive conditions of work. As the 1930s workers’ movement demonstrates, if conditions improve for immigrants, all workers will prosper. To gain traction, unions must recognize that capital is pitting migrant workers against native-born laborers to lower wages and improve profitability. Although unions have had some success organizing immigrants, most are circling the wagons, disinterested in building a more inclusive mass labor movement. The first step is for unions to go beyond rhetoric and form a broad and inclusive coalition embracing migrant workers.
All prefectural labor offices found engaged in dubious accounting
All 47 prefectural labor bureaus under the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare are found to have engaged in some form of irregular accounting practices such as logging expenses for staff travel never made, investigations by the government’s Board of Audit showed Saturday.
The bureaus misappropriated a total of more than 7 billion yen in the six years through fiscal 2004, they showed.
Coalition decides to shelve ‘conspiracy’ bill
The ruling coalition has given up trying to pass a highly criticized bill that would make “conspiracies” to commit crimes a punishable offense, officials said Friday.
The “conspiracy offense” bill is intended to target organized crime, but critics say it is so vaguely worded that it could be used against ordinary citizens, unions and civic groups.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200610070131.html
Firm punished over staff dispatch
The Osaka Labor Bureau slapped major subcontractor Collaborate Co. with a business suspension Tuesday for illegally sending its employees to clients as de facto temp staff.
The Workers’ Dispatch Law prohibits the practice, which amounts to subcontractors acting as temporary staff agencies.
It is the first time in Japan for a company to be told to actually close shop temporarily as punishment for the illegal practice.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200610050134.html