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Japanese employers exploiting foreign trainees and interns
Japanese employers increasingly are taking advantage of a program to teach job skills to foreign workers by paying them well under the minimum wage for overtime work, according to the Justice Ministry. In one particularly egregious case, foreign trainees were paid a paltry 350 yen per hour for overtime even though the minimum wage was…
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Matsushita Plasma got around rule on subcontracted workers
Matsushita Plasma Display Panel Co. (MPDP) rectified its illegal labor situation at a factory in July 2005, but implemented a similar system less than a year later after some shifty maneuvers, sources said. The problem surrounds a plasma-TV manufacturing plant in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, where between 700 and 800 workers from subcontracted companies are making…
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Matsushita sidesteps law to continue dodgy labor practice at factory
Matsushita Plasma Display Panel Co. (MPDP) rectified its illegal labor situation at a factory in July 2005, but implemented a similar system less than a year later after some shifty legal maneuvers, sources said. The problem surrounds a plasma-TV manufacturing plant in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, where between 700 and 800 workers dispatched from subcontracted companies…
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Big-name firms using dodgy labor practices
Some of Japan’s biggest manufacturers are skirting labor laws in a practice that allows them to avoid responsibility for the safety of “subcontracted” workers. The system also leaves the workers vulnerable to low pay and sudden dismissal. These companies have been repeatedly warned by prefectural labor bureaus to change their hiring practices, but many offenders…
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Louis Carlet Profiled in Mainichi Shimbun
Tokyo Nambu Deputy General Secretary Louis Carlet was profiled under the people section of page three of the Mainichi Shimbun. Japanese Link: http://www.mainichi-msn.co.jp/shakai/wadai/news/20060730k0000m070121000c.html
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National Union Voice
The Summer 2006 edition of the National Union Voice has just been published, with updates on our Berlitz and Nova Branches, as well as detailed information on your rights to Employee’s Health and Pension Insurance (Shakai Hoken), recent changes in National Health and Pension Insurance & social security treaties, and more.
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Revised ordinance bars gangs from sponsoring foreign entertainers
An amended government ordinance entered force Thursday, banning companies linked to organized crime syndicates from sponsoring foreign singers and dancers entering Japan on entertainment visas. The updated Justice Ministry ordinance is aimed at tackling human trafficking as foreign women who have entered Japan as entertainers have often been forced to work for low wages as…
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Registered foreigners top 2 million
The number of registered foreign residents in Japan at the end of 2005 totaled roughly 2,011,500, surpassing the 2 million mark for the first time ever, the Justice Ministry announced Friday. The figure was up 1.9 percent from a year ago and foreign nationals now account for 1.57 percent of the total population. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060527a2.html
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Japan set to accept more skilled foreign professionals
Japan is set to accept more foreign professionals by introducing more flexible immigration policies, the government said Thursday in line with a set of policy targets adopted by a government panel and aimed at securing leadership in international society. In an attempt to attract more human resources with highly advanced knowledge and techniques from abroad,…
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U.N. rapporteur raps Japan’s law on fingerprinting foreigners
A special U.N. rapporteur on racism on Thursday criticized Japan’s new immigration legislation on fingerprinting and photographing all foreign visitors as a process of treating foreigners like criminals. Doudou Diene, on his last day of a six-day visit to Japan to conduct a follow-up of his report on racism, said at a press conference in…