Job firing launched labor activist on career

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You may have seen him on TV, commenting on Nova teachers who lost their income and housing when the language school went bankrupt in November 2007. Or you may have seen him marching through Shibuya, leading a chant of “Tatakau zo! (We’ll fight!)” and calling for solidarity and action among workers. Or you may have seen him on the streets, handing out fliers he penned himself calling for an end to unfair dismissal.
 
On any of the above occasions, Louis Carlet, the vice secretary general of the 2,600-member-strong National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu (NUGW), of whom 15 percent are foreigners, is at ease with himself, pursuing his cause in flawless Japanese.

Carlet urges fellow foreigners to learn the Japanese language as best they can, and notes that he lives in a completely Japanese environment.

“I don’t support segregation,” said Carlet, who, despite often open and blatant discrimination against foreigners, plans to stay in Japan. “I want to be a normal part of society, separate my garbage properly and all that.

“And I think foreigners should learn Japanese, and I often pressure foreigners, ‘If you live here, learn Japanese. Even if you are here for two years, learn Japanese.’ “

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090414ww.html

Immigration reforms spell Big Brother, JFBA warns

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The Japan Federation of Bar Associations and nonprofit organizations voiced concern Wednesday that bills to revise immigration laws will violate the human rights of foreign residents.

The bills were submitted to the Diet earlier this month and will be deliberated on soon.

Critics of the bills also said punishments for violators of the revised laws, including a fine of up to ¥200,000 for those not carrying the new “zairyu” (residence) card that will replace the current alien registration cards, are too harsh.

The bills propose consolidating the management of foreign residents’ data under the Justice Ministry, replacing the current system in which local governments take charge of foreign resident registration, while the ministry handles immigration control.

“Overall, the revision greatly lacks consideration of foreigners’ privacy. The level of consideration is so much lower than that for Japanese,” Mitsuru Namba, a lawyer and member of the JFBA’s human rights protection committee, told reporters in Tokyo.

Social Democratic Party chief Mizuho Fukushima, who was at the briefing, is ready to oppose the government in the House of Councilors. “The bills suggest monitoring of foreigners will be strengthened. Management of information will lead to surveillance of foreigners,” she said.

Namba and Nobuyuki Sato of the Research-Action Institute for the Koreans in Japan urged lawmakers to amend the bills so the state can’t use the zairyu card code number as a “master key” to track every detail of foreigners’ lives.

“Such a thing would be unacceptable to Japanese, and (the government) must explain why it is necessary for foreigners,” Sato said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090326a3.html

Panel rules against decision not to indict Nova ex-president

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An independent panel formed by court-entrusted citizens has ruled unjust last year’s decision by prosecutors not to slap criminal charges on the failed English conversation school operator Nova Corp. and its former president for failing to pay salaries to foreign instructors and employees, the panel said Tuesday.

The decision was made by Osaka’s No. 2 committee for the inquest of prosecution, which urged the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office to reopen investigations into Nova and former Nova President Nozomu Sahashi, 57.

The panel found that Nova and Sahashi were aware of a revenue shortfall, ran the language school chain on a hand-to-mouth basis, and continued to hire instructors and employees without any clear prospect of ensuring the source of their salaries.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare filed with the prosecutors in June 2008 an investigative report on Nova and Sahashi on suspicion of violating the labor standards law for failing to pay about 105 million yen in salaries to some 400 language instructors and employees in September and October 2007.

But in July 2008, the prosecutors decided against indicting Nova and Sahashi, saying they did not intentionally fail to pay the salaries.

Sahashi is currently on trial at the Osaka District Court on charges of professional embezzlement for allegedly diverting about 320 million yen from an employment benefit fund to reimburse tuition fees to people who canceled contracts for language courses.

An 11-member committee for the inquest of prosecution is established at all district courts across Japan to check decisions by prosecutors, who have a monopoly on the authority to indict.

Its main mission is to review prosecutors’ decisions not to indict, usually acting upon a complaint from crime victims or their relatives.

The panel’s decision is nonbinding, but prosecutors will usually launch re-investigations if the committee rules against their decision not to prosecute.

Nova went under in October 2007 and Nagoya-based G.communication Co. took over some of Nova’s operations in November that year.

Sahashi started running English conversation classes in Osaka in 1981 and set up Nova in 1990. His venture grew into the nation’s largest chain of English conversation schools before going bankrupt.

http://www.breitbart.com:80/article.php?id=D974C6JG0&show_article=1

Punishing foreigners, exonerating Japanese

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Debito Arudou sees growing evidence of judicial double standards

If you’re a foreigner facing Japan’s criminal justice system, you can be questioned without probable cause on the street by police, apprehended for “voluntary questioning” in a foreign language, incarcerated perpetually while in litigation, and treated differently in jurisprudence than a Japanese.

Statistics bear this out. According to [Professor David T.] Johnson [author of “The Japanese Way of Justice”], 10 percent of all trials in Japan had foreign defendants in 2000. Considering that non-Japanese residents back then were 1.3 percent of the Japanese population, and foreign crime (depending on how you calculate it) ranged between 1 and 4 percent of the total, you have a disproportionate number of foreigners behind bars in Japan.

Feeling paranoid? Don’t. Just don’t believe the bromide that Japanese are a “peaceful, law-abiding people by nature.” They’re actually scared stiff of the police and the public prosecutor. So should you be. For until official government policy changes to make Japan more receptive to immigration, non-Japanese will be treated as a social problem and policed as such.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090324zg.html

Marriage rate for non-regular employees half that of regular employees

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Single males in non-regular employment have a much lower marriage rate than that of regular employees, a government survey has shown.

Moreover, the birth rate is lower among female non-regular workers than their regularly-employed peers, according to the survey.

The results of the survey conducted by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry suggest that the low marriage and birth rates are due partly to Japan’s insecure job market.

“Salaries for irregular employees are lower, and it’s harder for irregular workers to take child-care leave. These factors apparently discourage them from marrying and having children,” a ministry official said.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20090313p2a00m0na002000c.html

October-March temp firings up 26% to 157,806

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An estimated 157,806 nonregular employees, mainly temporary workers in the manufacturing sector, are expected to lose their jobs between last October and next month amid the recession, a labor ministry survey showed Friday.

The estimated number of job cuts during the six-month period represents a 26.4 percent rise from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s projection in its January survey, a finding highlighting the severity of the employment conditions of Japanese companies.

Temporary workers accounted for 107,375, or 68.0 percent, of the estimated 157,806 jobs being lost during the October-March period.

The remainder includes 28,877 contract employees and 12,988 workers hired by employment agencies.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20090228a3.html

Nonregular workers axed hits 158,000

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Nonregular workers who have lost their jobs or will become unemployed during the October-March period number 157,806 throughout the country, more than five times the corresponding figure in late November, a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey showed Friday.

The ministry conducted the survey by collating data on nonregular employees from the ministry’s Hello Work job-placement offices and regional labor bureaus across the country as of Feb. 18.

The latest figure is about 33,000 more than that recorded in a similar survey as of Jan. 26, signifying a surge from the figure of 30,067 as of Nov. 25 in the ministry’s first poll of this kind.

The latest survey results mean the number of nonregular workers who have lost or will lose their jobs has increased fivefold in the past three months.

Nonregular employees who were let go before the expiry of their contracts accounted for 41.4 percent of those surveyed.

The Labor Contract Law bans the dismissal of nonregular workers before the end of their employment contract without good reason.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090228TDY01304.htm

Court forcibly removes sacked workers who continued to operate hotel

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Tokyo District Court enforcement officers on Sunday forcibly removed sacked workers who had continued to operate a hotel in Tokyo even after it was closed down in October last year due to financial difficulties.

The situation arose after the original operator of the Keihin Hotel decided to close it down and fire its approximately 130 employees to pay back debts totaling around 6 billion yen to a Japanese affiliate of bankrupt U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Following the enforcement action, the dispute will move to the court where some of the former employees have filed a lawsuit seeking the nullification of the company’s decision to fire them.

[From Saturday evening through to] shortly before 6 a.m. Sunday, the former employees and labor union members [including members of NUGW Tokyo Nambu] supporting them protested in front of the hotel, located near Shinagawa station, to prevent the district court officers entering the building.

Scuffles with riot police accompanying the court officers broke out, but the officers entered the hotel at about 9:25 a.m. and finished the enforcement action around 15 minutes later.

Around 200 workers and supporters had gathered outside the hotel but no one was arrested. A former employee, who fell over and hit his head, was taken to hospital.

The former employees started operating the hotel and the restaurants in the hotel on their own a day after they were fired.

On Jan. 15, the Tokyo District Court decided to order the removal of the workers so that the building could be vacated in line with a demand from the hotel operator.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95U23I80&show_article=1

Laid-off hotel workers thrown out

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Officials from the Tokyo District Court evicted former workers from the Keihin Hotel in front of JR Shinagawa Station on Sunday, based on a Jan. 15 provisional ruling that supported the owner’s decision to sell the facility.

The former workers and labor union members [including members of NUGW Tokyo Nambu] who were supporting them occupied the hotel after the operator, Keihin Jitsugyo, laid off the hotel’s roughly 130 employees in October in the wake of the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers group in September.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090126a2.html