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Over 10,000 construction workers and family thought to be without health insurance
Over 10,000 people who joined a public health insurance program for self-employed construction workers even though they were not qualified to are thought to be without health insurance now, it has been learned.
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Schizophrenic Constitution leaves foreigners’ rights mired in confusion
So what rights do foreign residents have under the Constitution? Well, according to the Supreme Court, they are entitled to all the same rights as Japanese people, except for those which by their nature are only to be enjoyed by Japanese people.
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Japan’s population marks slowest growth in 2010
“While Japan has entered an era of population decline, its total population has been flat because of an increase in foreign nationals,” a ministry official said.
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Vietnamese to be trained as nurses
While more than 1,300 candidate nurses and caregivers have traveled to Japan from the two countries, only 19 have passed Japan’s qualification examination for nurses, due largely to language difficulties.
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Global Day of Rage: Hundreds of Thousands March Against Inequity, Big Banks, as Occupy Movement Grows
From Buenos Aires to Toronto, Kuala Lumpur to London, hundreds of thousands of people rallied on Saturday in a global day of action against corporate greed and budget cutbacks, demanding better living conditions and a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources.
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Hundreds turn out to ‘Occupy Tokyo’
The Occupy Wall Street protests spreading across the United States landed in Tokyo on Saturday, as hundreds of people [including members of Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union] gathered to protest against corporate greed and social inequality.
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Borderlink ALTs Unionized
On Friday, September 30th 20011, Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union and its Tozen ALTs Branch declared the existence of its Borderlink Shop to management and submitted a slate of 34 collective bargaining demands.
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Fear for jobs ignites “English crisis” in Japan
Japan’s foreign language education market is growing, with learners more than willing to fork out plenty of money on lessons, DVDs or e-learning. Gaba says that on average, a student spends about 50,000 yen ($654) a month [on English conversation lessons] — against an average 36,500 yen allowance for Japanese businesspeople.
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Welfare system not faring well
NHK found that a substantial portion of the recipients are able-bodied males between the ages of 20 and 60. The number of unemployed in Japan hovers just under the 5 million mark, and as one case worker explained, most of the new additions to the welfare rolls are men who were employed as haken (contract…
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74 percent of fixed contract workers earn below 2 million yen annually
Seventy-four percent of fixed-contract workers such as part-time and temporary employees earned less than 2 million yen a year, according to a recent survey, up 16.7 percentage points from the last survey in 2009, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Sept. 14.