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Friday 11 September 2009
Dying to earn: Japan’s foreign slave labourers
“The most serious problem we face are violations of the law,” Nakajima says. “But these are not just labour laws that are being broken; we see abuse of authority, sexual harassment and violence.
Last year, Jiang Xiandong was looking forward to returning to his wife and three-year-old daughter in Jiangsu province and using the business knowledge and industrial skills he had picked up during a three-year technical internship in Japan.
Instead, Jiang dropped dead at the age of 31 - one of 33 foreign trainees or interns who died while working for companies in Japan last year. A lawyers’ group says the deaths are a shocking indictment of a scheme, run by the Japanese government, that was designed to provide educational opportunities to people from developing countries but has become corrupted into a form of slave labour in which the victims have few rights and even less protection.
“We believe that the system of technical internships, as it stands at present, is very, very bad, and we are asking the Japanese government to cancel it,” Hiroshi Nakajima, a spokesman for the Advocacy Network for Foreign Trainees, said. “We do not dispute that the idea of helping developing countries is a good one, but the reality is that companies are using the system to get access to cheap labour.”
According to the Japanese International Training Co-operation Organisation, there are about 200,000 foreign trainees working in Japan at present, more than 70 per cent of them from China. They work in 124 industrial sectors.
According to NGOs representing these workers, the system is rife with abuses and, in rare cases, has led to deaths.
Jiang was working for an electronics components company called Fuji Denka Kogyo in Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo, and his duties included coating metal components with resins. An investigation by the Lawyers’ Network for Foreign Trainees indicated that the company had kept two time cards for their overseas staff, one to be shown to inspectors from the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry and another listing the real number of hours the workers put in.
In November 2007, Jiang worked 350 regular hours plus 180 hours’ overtime, meaning that he worked more than 17-1/2 hours every day of the month. He had not taken a day off in the 19 days before he died, on June 6 last year. According to an autopsy, his death was due to a heart attack.
“At the moment we are collecting evidence, and last month we applied for a labour insurance payment on behalf of his family,” said Lila Abiko, the lawyer handling the case. Jiang’s family is likely to receive more than 10 million yen (HK$840,000), and the legal team is also preparing a compensation suit against the company.
Most foreign trainees who come to Japan are in their twenties and thirties, and of those who died last year, 15 suffered fatal heart complaints or brain disease, one committed suicide and six died in accidents. Those figures are almost double the rates for Japanese in the same age group.
The lawyers’ group, set up in the month Jiang died, is working on 30 court cases and is in negotiations in connection with a further 30 complaints against companies involving industrial injuries, sexual harassment, physical threats and non-payment of wages.
This may be just the tip of the iceberg. Many more men and women have not had the opportunity to speak out about their working and living conditions, observers believe.
“Before these people come to Japan, they have to pay a deposit to a labour supply company in China, but if they are involved in a problem here, they are unable to get that money back, so they have little choice but to endure the situation,” Nakajima said.
“On top of that, many companies here will keep all or part of their wages back - it is illegal, but they still do it - while others keep their passports or insurance documents, which effectively makes them illegal residents of Japan. And they can say nothing against their employers, or they can be arrested and deported.”
Their silence allows their bosses to take full advantage of them.
In January, the Advocacy Network for Foreign Trainees took six women from China into its care after they sought help. The women had been undergoing “vocational training” at a sewing factory in the town of Yufu, in Oita prefecture, but had been required to start work before dawn each morning and received between 10,000 yen and 30,000 yen per month in overtime pay for working 270 hours overtime each month.
“In their first year in Japan, these people are not considered to be workers but trainees, so a loophole in the labour laws here means they are not covered,” Nakajima said. “That allows companies not to pay them the minimum legal wage, but the rate set for trainees.” That figure comes to around 300 yen an hour, less than half the legal minimum hourly wage.
According to the Ministry of Justice, a record 452 companies and organisations that took on foreign trainees last year have been investigated for labour law violations.
In one of the last pieces of legislation to be passed before the dissolution of the Japanese parliament for elections last month, revisions were made to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law to better protect foreign trainees’ rights. Workers’ advocacy groups say the changes do not go far enough, and hope the incoming Democratic Party of Japan government will make radical changes to the regulations.
“The most serious problem we face are violations of the law,” Nakajima says. “But these are not just labour laws that are being broken; we see abuse of authority, sexual harassment and violence.
“This system is basically controlled by the Japanese government. If they recognise a case of illegal practices, they have the power to stop it and prosecute the owner of the business. We want all workers, regardless of their nationality, to be covered by Japanese labour laws.
2 comments:
Dying to earn: Japan’s foreign slave labourers
Julian Ryall in Tokyo
11 September 2009
Last year, Jiang Xiandong was looking forward to returning to his wife and three-year-old daughter in Jiangsu province and using the business knowledge and industrial skills he had picked up during a three-year technical internship in Japan.
Instead, Jiang dropped dead at the age of 31 - one of 33 foreign trainees or interns who died while working for companies in Japan last year. A lawyers’ group says the deaths are a shocking indictment of a scheme, run by the Japanese government, that was designed to provide educational opportunities to people from developing countries but has become corrupted into a form of slave labour in which the victims have few rights and even less protection.
“We believe that the system of technical internships, as it stands at present, is very, very bad, and we are asking the Japanese government to cancel it,” Hiroshi Nakajima, a spokesman for the Advocacy Network for Foreign Trainees, said. “We do not dispute that the idea of helping developing countries is a good one, but the reality is that companies are using the system to get access to cheap labour.”
According to the Japanese International Training Co-operation Organisation, there are about 200,000 foreign trainees working in Japan at present, more than 70 per cent of them from China. They work in 124 industrial sectors.
According to NGOs representing these workers, the system is rife with abuses and, in rare cases, has led to deaths.
Jiang was working for an electronics components company called Fuji Denka Kogyo in Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo, and his duties included coating metal components with resins. An investigation by the Lawyers’ Network for Foreign Trainees indicated that the company had kept two time cards for their overseas staff, one to be shown to inspectors from the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry and another listing the real number of hours the workers put in.
In November 2007, Jiang worked 350 regular hours plus 180 hours’ overtime, meaning that he worked more than 17-1/2 hours every day of the month. He had not taken a day off in the 19 days before he died, on June 6 last year. According to an autopsy, his death was due to a heart attack.
“At the moment we are collecting evidence, and last month we applied for a labour insurance payment on behalf of his family,” said Lila Abiko, the lawyer handling the case. Jiang’s family is likely to receive more than 10 million yen (HK$840,000), and the legal team is also preparing a compensation suit against the company.
Most foreign trainees who come to Japan are in their twenties and thirties, and of those who died last year, 15 suffered fatal heart complaints or brain disease, one committed suicide and six died in accidents. Those figures are almost double the rates for Japanese in the same age group.
The lawyers’ group, set up in the month Jiang died, is working on 30 court cases and is in negotiations in connection with a further 30 complaints against companies involving industrial injuries, sexual harassment, physical threats and non-payment of wages.
This may be just the tip of the iceberg. Many more men and women have not had the opportunity to speak out about their working and living conditions, observers believe.
“Before these people come to Japan, they have to pay a deposit to a labour supply company in China, but if they are involved in a problem here, they are unable to get that money back, so they have little choice but to endure the situation,” Nakajima said.
“On top of that, many companies here will keep all or part of their wages back - it is illegal, but they still do it - while others keep their passports or insurance documents, which effectively makes them illegal residents of Japan. And they can say nothing against their employers, or they can be arrested and deported.”
Their silence allows their bosses to take full advantage of them.
In January, the Advocacy Network for Foreign Trainees took six women from China into its care after they sought help. The women had been undergoing “vocational training” at a sewing factory in the town of Yufu, in Oita prefecture, but had been required to start work before dawn each morning and received between 10,000 yen and 30,000 yen per month in overtime pay for working 270 hours overtime each month.
“In their first year in Japan, these people are not considered to be workers but trainees, so a loophole in the labour laws here means they are not covered,” Nakajima said. “That allows companies not to pay them the minimum legal wage, but the rate set for trainees.” That figure comes to around 300 yen an hour, less than half the legal minimum hourly wage.
According to the Ministry of Justice, a record 452 companies and organisations that took on foreign trainees last year have been investigated for labour law violations.
In one of the last pieces of legislation to be passed before the dissolution of the Japanese parliament for elections last month, revisions were made to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law to better protect foreign trainees’ rights. Workers’ advocacy groups say the changes do not go far enough, and hope the incoming Democratic Party of Japan government will make radical changes to the regulations.
“The most serious problem we face are violations of the law,” Nakajima says. “But these are not just labour laws that are being broken; we see abuse of authority, sexual harassment and violence.
“This system is basically controlled by the Japanese government. If they recognise a case of illegal practices, they have the power to stop it and prosecute the owner of the business. We want all workers, regardless of their nationality, to be covered by Japanese labour laws.
“We do not want anyone else to be killed.”
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