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Executive pay on the rise at top Japanese firms
Japan has at least three listed companies where a top executive earned more than 100 times the average annual salary for employees in the year ended March, according to their settlement accounts. “I felt disheartened to hear that the president received about 900 million yen when many workers are wondering every day how to save…
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Talks drag on, teachers fired in Berlitz case
After 20 months of legal wrangling, neither side has managed to snag a win in Berlitz Japan‘s ¥110 million lawsuit against five teachers and their union, Begunto. On the recommendation of the case’s lead judge, the company and union have been in court-mediated reconciliation talks since December. The agreement to enter the talks came after…
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Uniqlo chief Yanai calls on Japan to internationalize, accept immigration
The positive sides to immigration are enormous, as immigrants would both increase the population and stimulate the economy. If Japanese come into everyday contact with foreigners from childhood, it would also help alleviate Japanese people’s distaste for internationalization. Europe, the U.S. and all the other advanced nations in the world accept immigrants. As the economy…
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自治体財政難、ＡＬＴ直接雇用激減 労使トラブルも
小中学校や高校に配置され子供の国際理解を手助けする外国語指導助手（ＡＬＴ）。厳しい財政事情を背景に、自治体による直接雇用が減り、民間企業を通じた派遣や業務委託が増えている。一方、元ＡＬＴの英国人男性が、ＡＬＴ関連としては県内で初めて県労働委員会に不当労働行為の救済を申し立てて、２０日に証人尋問が行われるなど、雇用をめぐるトラブルも表面化。自治体の直接雇用を求める声が上がっている。
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Stop exploiting trainees as cheap labor: lawyers
It is high time the government faced facts and scrapped its industrial training and internship program because it is used to exploit foreign trainees as a cheap source of labor, a lawyer group said Thursday, claiming the purpose of the system and its reality are worlds apart. The trainee system is touted as making an…
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Japan Training Program Is Said to Exploit Workers
Six young Chinese women arrived in this historic city three summers ago, among the tens of thousands of apprentices brought to Japan each year on the promise of job training, good pay and a chance at a better life back home. Instead, the women say, they were subjected to 16-hour workdays assembling cellphones at below…
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Immigration procedures face huge shakeup
As of July 1, there are big changes afoot for the laws governing foreign residency in Japan. Not since 1990, when the categories of residence increased from 18 to 27, has the Ministry of Justice’s Immigration Bureau undergone such a wholesale reordering of its operations. What’s coming up? Aside from a number of smaller revisions,…
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Fewer Foreigners In Japan For First Time In Half-Century
The number of foreigners who officially call the Land of the Rising Sun home has fallen for the first time in nearly half a century, according to a report released by the Justice Ministry this week. In another blow to the country’s graying population and impending labor shortage, the number of registered foreign residents fell…
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Japanese firms to boost hiring of foreigners by up to 50%
Major Japanese firms are planning to boost hiring of foreign nationals by up to 50 percent of their new recruits in fiscal 2011, officials of the companies said Tuesday. Fast Retailing Co., the operator of the popular Uniqlo casual clothing chain, major convenience store chain Lawson Inc. and Rakuten Inc., which operates the largest Internet…
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Ex-immigration boss: detentions too long
llegal residents should not be held in detention for more than one year because any longer causes too much stress, a former chief of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau said, noting extended incarceration led to two hunger strikes at detention centers this year, one of which followed suicides. “One year of confinement is mentally tough,”…