Demanding better job and housing security, a demonstration by 300 Brazilians and their supporters [including members of the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus] in Tokyo Sunday is just the latest sign of the impact that the global economic slowdown is having on Japan’s Brazilian-based workforce.
Waving their national flags across the busy streets of central Tokyo, the demonstrators called out, ‘Give us a chance of employment,’ ‘Stop abandoning us’ and ‘We don’t have secured housing.’
Many temporary Brazilian workers have lost jobs recently, primarily in the car and electronics industries, as Japanese exports have slumped due to the sluggish economy and the Japanese yen’s gains against other currencies. Others have been informed of planned layoffs in the spring.
Dosantos Marcos, one of the protesters, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa he was told to stay at home, since production is slow at the car parts plant where he worked for seven years. The 42-year-old Brazilian has not worked for two months.
Since September last year, when exporters began reducing production, planes to Brazil have been fully booked, according to Hidekichi Hashimoto, the third-generation Japanese-Brazilian President of the non-profit organization ABC Japan.
‘For Japanese companies, we are the easiest to cut because most of us don’t speak Japanese and they think that we have no intention of staying long,’ Hashimoto said.
But about 80,000 of the 320,000 Brazilians living in Japan have acquired the residency visa necessary to stay permanently, he said.
Takaharu Hayashi, director of Koryunet, a Brazilian-Japanese networking association in the Aichi prefecture, has received numerous calls from Brazilians working at auto factories. Toyota Motor Corp, also headquartered in Aichi prefecture, plans to cut 3,000 non- regular workers.
‘Japanese companies are saying they can’t help it when Japanese are also having difficulties keeping their jobs,’ Hayashi said. ‘There is a mentality that Japanese business owners are trying to push Brazilians to the lowest strata because they are less visible.’
As of December last year, more than 85,000 Japanese temporary workers were set to lose their jobs by the end of March.
During the New Year holiday, some 300 unemployed Japanese temporary workers gathered at a park in Tokyo to receive free lodging and food. Most were able to receive government welfare subsidies and find apartments in a week and began job search.
But Hayashi said Brazilians who have not established the necessary relations within Japanese society to help them find resources to tackle their hardships.
‘They don’t have the safety net that Japanese workers do,’ Hayashi said. ‘The gravity of a layoff is weighed much heavier on Brazilians because the government has no system to rescue them from the troubles and their options are much more limited than the Japanese.’
Brazilian workers protest layoffs in Japan
Some 200 Brazilian workers Sunday protested over layoffs by Japanese companies, which are forcing many of them to leave the country despite their community having been integrated in Japan for more than two decades.
The demonstrators, who included mothers with their children [and also included members of the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus], marched through the centre of Tokyo’s glitzy Ginza shopping district, calling for the government’s support for stable employment.
The crowd, many holding Brazilian flags, demanded “employment for 320,000” Brazilians in Japan.
“We are Brazilians!” they shouted in unison. “Companies must stop using us like disposable labour.”
Since 1990 Japan has given special working visas to hundreds of thousands of Brazilians of Japanese descent, many of whom have taken up temporary positions as manual labourers in factories.
Amid the global economic downturn, however, many are being laid off and being forced to return to Brazil. They are often overshadowed by the 85,000 Japanese contract workers also said to be losing their jobs by March.
“No matter how hard we worked in Japan, we are being cut off because we are contract labourers,” said Midori Tateishi, 38, who came to Japan nearly 20 years ago. “Many of us are totally at a loss with children and a housing loan.”
Last year, Japan and Brazil marked the 100th anniversary after the first group of Japanese immigrants left for Brazil in search of a better life.
Brazil is now home to more than 1.2 million people of Japanese descent, or “Nikkeis”, the world’s largest population of ethnic Japanese outside of Japan itself.
Brazilians protest in Tokyo over lack of job security
Brazilian residents from the Kanto area, Aichi and other prefectures held a demonstration in Tokyo on Sunday, campaigning for greater job security for foreign workers.
Around 350 people [including Nambu FWC members following out Winter Meeting], waving Brazilian flags and carrying banners reading “A chance for employment and education,” walked the 2.5 kilometers from Shimbashi to Ginza.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090119p2a00m0na002000c.html
Foreign worker tally tops 486,000
The number of foreign workers employed in Japan stood at 486,398 at the end of October, including 118,488 in Tokyo, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Friday.
The total is more than double a previous estimate of 223,000 based on voluntary reports by employers in June 2006, before the revised employment promotion law took effect in October 2007, obliging employers to file reports on foreign employees.
By prefecture, Tokyo had the largest number of foreign workers, followed by Aichi with 60,326, Shizuoka with 31,453 and Kanagawa with 27,473.
Temporary and contract workers accounted for 33.6 percent of total foreign employees, suggesting many of them, primarily in manufacturing, have lost their jobs amid the recession.
Official withdraws jobless remark
Tetsushi Sakamoto, parliamentary secretary for internal affairs and communications, on Tuesday apologized for and retracted a remark he made the previous day in which he cast doubt on whether unemployed people at a temporary tent village in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park had the desire to work hard.
“The idea that crossed my mind was that even though the employment situation may be seriously bad, some of them [who had come to the tent village] might not have a serious desire to work. I made the remark without fully grasping the situation,” said Sakamoto, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker in his second term in the House of Representatives. “I disturbed and upset many people. I’d like to retract the remark and deeply apologize to those concerned.”
But he ruled out the possibility of resigning as parliamentary secretary, as had been demanded by the opposition parties.
LDP figure hits Hibiya jobless as slackers, retracts gaffe
Referring to the hundreds of laid-off temp workers and others who sought shelter over the weekend at a tent village in Tokyo, the Liberal Democratic Party member said at a New Year’s address Monday, “I wonder if people who are really serious about working gathered there.”
After opposition lawmakers and others objected to his remarks, Sakamoto apologized at a news conference.
“I have caused trouble to concerned parties,” he said.
Japan makes progress in 2009
As we start 2009, let’s recharge the batteries by reviewing last year’s good news. Here is [an abbreviated version of Arudou Debito‘s] list of top human rights advancements for Japan in 2009, in ascending order:
5. Strawberry fields forever
(Feb. 11): Fifteen Chinese trainees sued strawberry farms in Tochigi Prefecture for unpaid wages, unfair dismissal and an attempted repatriation by force. Thanks to [Tokyo Nambu and the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus allies] Zentoitsu Workers Union, they were awarded ¥2 million each in back pay and overtime, a formal apology, and reinstatement in their jobs.Why this matters: This is another good precedent, treating non-Japanese (NJ) laborers (who as trainees aren’t covered by labor laws) the same as Japanese workers. It is also the subject of the German documentary “Sour Strawberries“, which premieres in Japan in March.
3. Non-Japanese get ¥12,000
(Dec. 20): The “teigaku kyufukin” first started out as a clear bribe to voters to “yoroshiku” the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Then complaints were raised about the other taxpayers who aren’t citizens, so permanent residents and NJ married to Japanese became eligible. Finally, just before Christmas, all registered NJ were included.Why this matters: Even if this “stimulus” is ineffective, it’s a wall-smasher: Japan’s public policy is usually worded as applying to “kokumin,” or citizens only. It’s the first time a government cash-back program (a 1999 coupon scheme only included permanent residents) has included all noncitizen taxpayers, and recognized their importance to the Japanese economy.
LDP lawmaker apologizes for hinting ‘tent village’ residents don’t want to work
Parliamentary Secretary for Internal Affairs and Communications Tetsushi Sakamoto on Tuesday retracted his controversial comments questioning whether unemployed people who took shelter in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park over the New Year period seriously possess the will to work.
“I have caused trouble to many people,” Sakamoto, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker from the Kumamoto third district, said as he apologized at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090106p2a00m0na008000c.html
Nambu New Year Flag Raising Party
Tokyo Nambu’s New Year Flag Raising Party will be held on Wednesday, January 14 at 7:00pm in Kyurian, across the street from Oimachi Station (JR Keihin Tohoku Line/ Tokyu Toyoko Line). 3,000 yen charge gets you plenty of food, drink and inspiring speeches.
All members and supporters are welcome.
Kyurian
Oimachi 5-18-1, Shinagawa-ku
Google Maps link
Park homeless promised shelter
The organizing group for a tent village in Hibiya Park in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, said Sunday the welfare ministry has promised to prepare new shelters for the 500 people there.
The homeless people, many of them believed to be temporary workers recently thrown out of their jobs, have been staying in the park and a nearby welfare ministry hall.
“This situation is a man-made disaster caused by a wrongheaded (government) policy that allows employers to use workers as a disposable resource. We’d like the government to fulfill its responsibility” to protect workers, said [the Secretary General of a union for temporary workers].
The organizing group has called on the ministry to provide housing, food and clothes for the people in the park and hall.