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4,300 foreign workers face job losses
Reflecting the precarious working conditions experienced by many non-Japanese laborers, a recent government survey found roughly 4,300 foreign workers lost, or were expected to lose, their jobs as of December. Over 30 percent of the 486,000 foreign nationals working in Japan are employed as dispatch or contract workers, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare…
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Japan’s Brazilians demand job security as exports slow
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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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,…
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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…
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Jobless flood ‘tent village’
A New Year shelter for Japan’s growing number of jobless had to move from a park into a government building yesterday, after more people than expected flocked to the makeshift ‘tent village’. The shelter – which was made up of 50 tents – was set up by volunteers and labour unions on New Year’s Eve…
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Hibiya Park tent village for laid-off workers draws 300
The population of a temporary tent village set up for people who have lost their jobs and housing had exceeded 300 by Friday compared with about 130 on New Year’s Eve when volunteers first established it in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park, organizers said. “People here have been worn out due to the cold . . .…