Protesters fear Nike deal leaves them in cold
A group of protesters camped out in Tokyo’s Miyashita Park [the site of most March in Marches] has stalled Shibuya Ward’s plan to renovate the site in collaboration with sporting goods maker Nike Inc.
The protesters argue a public park built with taxpayer money should be available to anyone for any purpose — even for the homeless to stay in.
Miyashita Park, just one minute on foot from JR Shibuya Station, is one of the few patches of green in the bustling district.
Under the plan, Nike, which bought the right to name the park from the ward for ¥17 million annually for 10 years, will renovate two existing courts for “futsal,” a variant of soccer, and build rock climbing facilities and skateboard ramps.
The protest group, made up of dozens of people ranging from students to artists, argue the park will become a giant advertisement for Nike, not a public place where people can relax as they please.
They also point out Shibuya Ward has already “forced” about 30 homeless people to leave in preparation for the construction of the Nike-sponsored facilities.
“(Nike and Shibuya Ward) think Miyashita Park cannot be a relaxing place for everybody because the homeless are here. We strongly protest such an idea,” said Tetsuo Ogawa, a core member of the Coalition to Protect Miyashita Park from Becoming Nike Park. Ogawa, who lives in a tent in the park, describes himself as an artist.
The protesters have set up about 10 tents to physically block the renovation work, which was to have begun April 1. It isn’t clear if the work will be completed by November, as originally planned by Nike.
Nike will cover the undisclosed costs of construction on what is to be named Miyashita Nike Park. The ward is planning to charge for the use of the futsal courts, rock climbing facilities and skateboard ramps.
The protesters claim that by doing so the ward is permanently depriving the homeless of a place to stay.
But ward officials deny they are trying to drive away the homeless, pointing out that other parts of the park will remain open to everyone free of charge.
“We are not saying we will deploy security guards to monitor the park 24 hours a day, so technically the homeless will be able to stay even after the park is rebuilt,” said Akihiko Ozawa, a Shibuya Ward official in charge of park management.
Ozawa adds, however, that he isn’t encouraging anyone to camp out in public places because it is illegal.
He said the ward diplomatically asked the homeless to vacate while the construction work is carried out.
Shibuya Ward said it sold the naming right to Nike in response to requests by local residents for sports facilities without spending taxpayer money.
Nike and the ward have not reached a decision yet on design details, such as whether the Nike logo will be displayed, Nike spokeswoman Yoko Mizukami said.
“Our company’s mission is to contribute to society through sports. We have offered the plan to provide a place for people to play sports as Shibuya Ward had said not many people were using the park,” she said.
Many local residents and a majority of ward assembly members welcome the Nike plan.
The ward assembly approved the Nike plan March 31 by a vote of 26 to 7.
Seiji Saito, director general of the Meiji Street Miyashita Park Merchant Association, said the plan is welcome because a clean park will likely attract more visitors.
However, this may no longer be just a local issue.
According to the protest group’s Web site, No-Vox, an international network of grassroots social movements against poverty, joined the Tokyo demonstrators March 31 in Paris, Sydney and Bangkok.
In Tokyo, 200 to 300 people marched in Shibuya to support the protest group’s activities.
Gov’t drafts guidelines for teaching Japanese to foreign residents
A government subcommittee has drafted guidelines for the first time on teaching Japanese to foreign residents of Japan in order to support them in their daily lives, government officials said Thursday.
The draft guidelines compiled by a Council for Cultural Affairs subcommittee lists examples of words and phrases that foreigners should be encouraged to learn for smooth communication in 10 main types of situations, including health care, travel and activities related to consumption and safety.
The main types are subdivided into 48 categories in which recommended words and phrases are situated in more concrete scenarios such as how to use trains and medicines in Japan.
The number of registered foreign residents in Japan stood at around 2.22 million at the end of 2008, according to the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Justice.
Many government officials concerned with language education believe it would be desirable for at least 1 million of the foreign residents to learn Japanese so that they can live their lives smoothly.
However, there has been no previous attempt to compile government standards on the extent to which foreign residents should learn Japanese.
The draft, due to be submitted shortly to the Japanese language division of the Council for Cultural Affairs, estimates that the total learning period under the proposed guidelines would be around 60 hours.
“(The curriculum) would mean a great deal if it serves to demonstrate the government’s intention to support foreigners living in Japan for a long period,” says Takeshi Yoshitani, a professor who heads Tokyo Gakugei University’s Center for Research in International Education.
Public support will be necessary for foreign residents to secure the 60 hours of learning, he added.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100416p2g00m0dm004000c.html
Woman sues Prada Japan for firing her after she reported inappropriate remarks
A former division manager at Prada Japan has filed a lawsuit against the company for firing her after she reported inappropriate remarks by a superior, it has been learned.
The 36-year-old former manager with the Italian fashion house’s Tokyo office filed a suit against Prada Japan with the Tokyo District Court, seeking the reversal of her dismissal and the payment of damages.
According to her lawyer, the woman reported to the company’s head office in Milan, Italy, that she was told by her superior to lose weight in September of last year. After she did this, the Tokyo office proceeded to notify the woman that she would be dismissed the next month, and she was ordered to stay at home and await instructions during the workday, rather than come to work.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100416p2a00m0na019000c.html
[Questionable] Justice for former JNR workers
A 23-year-old labor dispute affecting former workers of the now-defunct Japanese National Railways (JNR) is likely to be resolved, as the National Railway Workers’ Union (Kokuro) and other bodies concerned have accepted a ¥20 billion settlement plan.
Under the plan, worked out by the coalition government and Komeito, 910 households will each receive ¥22 million as “reconciliation money,” for a total of some ¥14.2 billion. Kokuro and other bodies concerned will receive some ¥5.8 billion, to be used to help the former workers find employment. However, there is no guarantee that every former worker will be employed by the JR firms that took over JNR’s operations.
JNR was privatized and divided in April 1987, but the newly established JR firms refused to employ some 7,630 former JNR workers, mostly Kokuro members. Those former JNR workers were transferred to the now-defunct JNR Settlement Corp. but it fired 1,047 of them.
Under the JNR reform law, newly established JR firms offered positions to JNR workers based on a list supplied by JNR. When compiling the list, the JNR told workers that those who did not leave labor unions such as Kokuro and the Japan Railway Motive Power Union would not be employed at JR firms.
Central and regional labor-relations commissions, one after another, recognized illegal labor practices on the part of the JR firms and ordered them to hire the workers fired by JNR Settlement Corp. But a 2003 Supreme Court ruling sided with the JNR firms, saying that as independent bodies they were under no obligation to employ the fired workers. This triggered litigation against the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency, which by then had taken over some of JNR Settlement Corp.’s business.
The government is largely responsible for the confusion because the content of the JNR reform law failed to prevent the illegal labor practices. The JR firms have a responsibility to hire the workers in question. The government should take steps to ensure that the details of settlement are executed properly, and that the former workers find employment.
Ultranationalist ‘citizens groups’ on the march
“Get out of Japan!”
“Cockroach.”
“Kimchi.”
Those were just some of the insults hurled at a demonstration on Feb. 21 in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.
More than 100 protesters belonging to several groups describing themselves as “active conservatives” gathered in front of a building that houses both the consular affairs department of the South Korean Embassy and the offices of the Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan).
Other flags and signs carried angry messages, such as “Expel foreigners,” and slogans equating Korean nationals living in Japan to criminals. Some of the words used could not be printed in a newspaper.
The protesters’ anger seemed to be targeted at a wide range of institutions including the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, China and North Korea. Reporters covering the demonstration were also yelled at.
The group eventually moved on to the Australian Embassy, where they yelled, “We will start a war with white people who insult Japan (over the whaling issue).”
At the same time as the Minato Ward protest, demonstrations were held in Nagoya and Fukuoka protesting plans to give foreign permanent residents the right to vote in local elections.
The Kyoto bar association issued a statement criticizing the group’s actions as “going beyond criticism of the use of the park to being a hate campaign to encourage discrimination.” On March 24, the Kyoto District Court issued a temporary order banning further demonstrations.
For Japan to thrive, the wall must come down
More than 20 years have passed since the Berlin Wall fell, yet Japan remains shut out from the rest of humanity by its own wall. Though it is a shapeless partition that we cannot touch, it nevertheless cuts off the country from the world beyond its shores. What are the characteristics of this invisible barrier?
It serves as much to prevent inbound flows as outward ones. Japan is the only major developed nation where almost none of the men and women of influence — in the realm of ideas, business or government — are from foreign backgrounds. Tokyo, as opposed to other global metropolises, has no cosmopolitan flavor. There is a striking paucity of Japanese people teaching in foreign universities, writing about the humanities and social sciences or contemporary politics in scholarly journals or mass-circulation magazines and Web sites, and working in multinational corporations, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations.
This intangible forcefield harms Japan much more than is generally realized. It condemns Japanese universities, especially in the humanities and social sciences, to international irrelevance. This is not to say that Japan lacks great researchers — it has plenty of them. But they operate in an environment with few foreign colleagues and students (except for a few Asian countries), are under-represented in international conferences, and rarely publish in global journals. Thus, their ideas remain locked within the boundaries of the wall.
This sad state of affairs deprives the country of international influence. As so few Japanese thinkers are heard abroad, the intellectuals, business and government leaders, activists and others who set the worldwide agenda in areas as diverse as economic priorities and fisheries managements are very rarely Japanese. Japan has an enormous stake in climate-change policy, but not one Japanese is playing a key role in shaping the global debate on the issue.
Isolation hurts Japan’s economy, especially in services. Unlike their industrial counterparts, service companies such as hotels, transportation, Web-centric businesses, entertainment and software businesses require a global mind-set and cultural awareness to be successful overseas. If so few Japanese conglomerates have managed to establish themselves in the premier league outside of manufacturing, it is partly due to their mono-cultural and exclusively Japanese management. It puts them at a severe disadvantage when competing with foreign rivals run by multinational and multicultural staffs.
The wall is partly to blame for the country’s greatest handicap. In the past decade, feminization has made great strides worldwide. The situation is far from perfect, but many societies are now making much better use of the talents of the half of the population that happens to be female. One reason Japan is so far behind is that it is cut off from these global trends.
How can Japan, in former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s famous words, tear down this wall? One way is to encourage Japanese to make a name for themselves overseas. Universities could give preference to professors who have both studied and taught for several years overseas and publish in foreign journals. Government agencies could make service abroad in international organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization a major asset when considering hirings and promotions.
In the private sector, hopefully more businesses will realize that success, especially but not only in service industries, calls upon a global mind-set. This will entail hiring more foreigners in management positions and internationalizing Japanese staff. Anybody familiar with the Japanese hospitality industry — hotels, airlines, airports — knows how much more competitive it would be if it were more international and less parochial.
Japan has made a remarkable effort to welcome foreign students. But for Japan to attract dynamic and ambitious young men and women, they must be convinced that, though they are not Japanese, they will be able to join the business and academic elite of the country.
Knocking down the wall will be hard. As was the case with Berlin’s barbed wire, it protects the establishment. Japan’s best and brightest will benefit from cultural globalization, but many men who have been sheltered by the barriers that surround Japan (and from competing with women) will find the process traumatizing. But if the nation is to thrive in the 21st century, the wall must go.
End to long JR dispute inspires mixed feelings
Former national railway workers have mixed feelings about Friday’s settlement of a 23-year-old dispute over Japan Railway companies’ refusal to hire them when Japanese National Railways was privatized in 1987.
“Sixty of our coworkers have passed away. I deeply regret I can’t share the joy of the resolution with them, but we can embark on a new chapter in our lives,” Shinji Takahashi, chairman of the National Railway Workers Union (Kokuro), said Friday during a press conference at the union’s headquarters in Shimbashi, Tokyo.
Takahashi also said Kokuro would seek to reach an agreement with the JR companies over the issue of reemployment, through labor-management talks.
“I want each JR firm to hire [union members] from a humanitarian point of view,” he said.
After JNR was privatized in 1987, JR companies did not hire a total of 1,047 JNR workers. Because 966 of them were Kokuro members, the union said they had been discriminated against. An executive of East Japan Railway Co. said he felt strange about the government’s proposal to pay an average settlement of 22 million yen per person. Now in his 50s, he remembers when about 70,000 workers left the railway industry at the time of the privatization.
“One of my colleagues, who loved being a conductor, was holding back tears when he had to join another industry,” the executive said. “Thinking about people like him, it’s hard for me to unreservedly be happy for the people who will be released from years of struggle.”
Reluctance on rehiring
Kokuro has been demanding “employment, pensions and settlements,” but a solution to the reemployment issue has yet to be found due to the reluctance of JR companies.
When the national railway was broken up and privatized, JR companies downsized their workforces by about 70,000 people and transferred employees to the Tokyo metropolitan area from such far-distant locations as Hokkaido and Kyushu.
The companies feel it would be difficult for those who went through the downsizing and transfers to accept the hiring of the union members. Also, the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that JR companies have no responsibility to hire the workers in the case.
According to the plaintiffs, about 260 of the 910 who will receive settlement money from the government want to be reemployed. In the agreement, however, the government asks JR companies to hire only about 200 people.
This limited recruitment, together with changes in the amount of settlement money, gives the public the impression that the resolution is a murky political settlement.
Momentum gathered in 2000 for a political resolution, but a new lawsuit filed by the union side and other considerations prevented it.
JR workplaces change with the times, so the longer it takes to reach a resolution, the harder it will be for the plaintiffs to return to railway jobs.
What is required now is to face the reality that the prolonged conflict is making the people involved suffer, and to work to build healthy union-management relations.
23-yr dispute over JR’s refusal to hire union workers to be settled
Representatives of union workers decided Friday to accept a proposal in which the government would pay each worker roughly 22 million yen, bringing to an end a 23-year-old dispute over the refusal of Japan Railway companies to hire them.
The ruling parties and the opposition New Komeito party presented the roughly 20 billion yen settlement package, which was worked out with the government on Thursday, to a union and other related bodies on Friday morning, and the union side confirmed its acceptance in the afternoon.
The four parties had proposed asking the JR companies to hire some 200 former workers of the state-run Japanese National Railways, which was privatized and divided into the companies in 1987.
But given the reluctance of JR companies to hire the former workers, the government said in its settlement proposal that it cannot guarantee employment for every former worker because it cannot force the companies to hire them.
The four parties’ suggestion that subsidies be paid to some of the JR companies if they agree to hire the former workers did not make it into the proposal.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama “approved the outline” of the proposal, transport minister Seiji Maehara told reporters after briefing the prime minister on it in the afternoon.
Maehara is expected to announce the government’s acceptance of the deal shortly.
Under the proposal, Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency, an organization that inherited debts from JNR, would pay roughly 22 million yen per worker to 910 households involved in the litigation. The households consist of plaintiffs and surviving family members.
The plaintiffs are among the 1,047 workers that JNR’s successor companies refused to hire upon JNR’s privatization, many of them members of the National Railway Workers Union, known as Kokuro.
The settlement money would be paid if the plaintiffs drop their cases.
Of the 20 billion yen to be paid to the former workers, roughly 14.2 billion yen would go toward paying for the damages awarded in a ruling in March 2009 and litigation fees, and about 5.8 billion yen for Kokuro and other related bodies to help the former workers find jobs.
Last month, the Democratic Party of Japan and its two coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party and the People’s New Party, as well as New Komeito had proposed to the government a settlement package that would pay about 24 million yen per worker.
The government then presented the parties with a plan to pay roughly 20 million yen per worker, after considering the amounts of compensation paid in previous liability cases in which the state was involved. The amount was later raised to 22 million yen per worker after negotiations between them.
The ALT Scam
Cross-posted from the Fukuoka General Union.
Throughout Japan Boards of Education have been moving away from the JET program in favour of outsourcing ALT jobs to dispatch companies. In Fukuoka it has come to the point that most BOEs subcontract out their work.
This page is aimed to shed some light on the current systems that operate to the detriment of ALTs – who are practically all non-Japanese (NJ).
Japan’s rank down in intl sex gap report
Japan’s ranking in a World Economic Forum report on the equality of the sexes was recently revised down 26 places to 101st among 134 nations, reflecting objections raised by a Japanese women’s organization and others about the initial assessment made in October.
The reassessment by the Geneva-based forum in its annual Gender Gap Report left Japan at the lowest level among developed countries, with the gap especially pronounced in economic and political fields.
Japan had been ranked 80th among 115 countries in 2006, 91st among 128 nations in 2007 and 98th among 130 countries in 2008.
The World Economic Forum has ranked different countries in its Global Gender Gap Index since 2006.
Japan’s overall ranking in the index published at the end of October shot up to 75th.
The change was especially startling in the professional and technical workers section of the economic participation and opportunity category, where Japan’s ratio of women was ranked first, up from 69th the previous year. In the section concerning legislators, senior officials and managers, the ranking catapulted from 101st in 2008 to 6th.
However, the rankings raised some eyebrows in Japan. The Working Women’s Network, a civic group, suggested the rankings did not reflect reality and sent a written inquiry to the WEF, quoting statistics compiled by the United Nations and the Japanese government.
Believing the WEF’s citation data must have been wrong, Kanazawa University Associate Prof.
Yayoi Sugihashi, an expert on economic statistics, recalculated the figures using the database of the International Labor Organization and informed the WEF of mistakes in the index.
On March 24, Sugihashi received a reply from the WEF that said the index had been revised as Sugihashi had indicated and Japan’s ranking corrected down to 101st on its Web site.
“I think the WEF had little choice but to make the correction,” Sugihashi said. “The ranking is very influential–it’s sometimes cited in government white papers.”
http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Asia/Story/A1Story20100407-208934.html