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Plaintiff gets redress but not for racial bias
A black American man won a partial victory Wednesday in a discrimination suit against a shopkeeper who had barred his entry, when the Osaka High Court ruled that the defendant’s action was illegal, but not racially biased despite his stated bigotry, and awarded the plaintiff 350,000 yen. In overturning the lower court ruling, the high…
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Ratio of dispatch workers to regular employees rises to 12.4%
The ratio of dispatched workers to regular corporate employees in Japan came to 12.4% last year, more than double the figure eight years ago, a government survey showed Monday. The data, compiled by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, indicated corporate Japan is increasingly incorporating temporary workers to cut personnel costs following 1999 deregulation in…
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8,340 foreign trainees missing / Bureau says many on program forced to work excessive hours for low pay
An investigation last year by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry on companies using the trainees found that 731 firms, or about 80 percent, were making them work very long hours for low pay, in violation of the Labor Standards Law and the Minimum Wages Law. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20061018TDY03001.htm
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Immigration Battle Diary
Fundamentally, [Hidenori] Sakanaka [former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau] argues, the issue before Japan is what kind of country it wants to become by the middle of this century: a “big” country or a “small” country. Becoming a Big Country means accepting, by 2050, roughly 20 million immigrants in order to maintain current economic levels…
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The Rise of Migrant Militancy
As organizing campaigns in New York City show, migrant workers are indispensable to the revitalization of the labor movement. As employers turn to migrant labor to fill low-wage jobs, unions must encourage and support organizing drives that emerge from the oppressive conditions of work. As the 1930s workers’ movement demonstrates, if conditions improve for immigrants,…
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All prefectural labor offices found engaged in dubious accounting
All 47 prefectural labor bureaus under the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare are found to have engaged in some form of irregular accounting practices such as logging expenses for staff travel never made, investigations by the government’s Board of Audit showed Saturday. The bureaus misappropriated a total of more than 7 billion yen in…
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Coalition decides to shelve ‘conspiracy’ bill
The ruling coalition has given up trying to pass a highly criticized bill that would make “conspiracies” to commit crimes a punishable offense, officials said Friday. The “conspiracy offense” bill is intended to target organized crime, but critics say it is so vaguely worded that it could be used against ordinary citizens, unions and civic…
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Firm punished over staff dispatch
The Osaka Labor Bureau slapped major subcontractor Collaborate Co. with a business suspension Tuesday for illegally sending its employees to clients as de facto temp staff. The Workers’ Dispatch Law prohibits the practice, which amounts to subcontractors acting as temporary staff agencies. It is the first time in Japan for a company to be told…
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Temp staff violations to lead to suspension
A major Osaka-based subcontractor is facing a business suspension order after it continued to dispatch temporary staff in violation of the Workers’ Dispatch Law, sources said. They said the suspension order, to be served as early as this week, will cover all 84 offices of Collaborate Co., and will likely see the manufacturing subcontractor’s business…
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When illegal foreign workers get hurt, compensation is an uphill battle
Individuals, […], labor unions and private organizations are continuing low-profile activities to provide support for those injured workers. Under the workers’ accident compensation insurance, even if a victim of an industrial accident is working here illegally, compensatory payments are made. However, many employers refuse to help their illegal employees apply for workers’ compensation. And many illegal…