FUKUOKA — Three people and two firms were indicted Feb. 2 on charges of dispatching a worker to the Oi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture under a falsified contract in violation of the Employment Security Law.
Those indicted by the Kokura Local Public Prosecutors Office are Hideo Ichise, 58, of Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, Yoshimi Tomita, 59, of Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture, and Kanae Ikegami, 36, of Kitakyushu’s Wakamatsu Ward. Prosecutors also indicted Taihei Dengyo Kaisha Ltd., a Tokyo-based power plant construction and maintenance firm, and Takada Kiko, a plumbing firm in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture.
The Kokura Summary Court on Feb. 2 fined Ichise and Tomita and the two firms 500,000 yen each and Ikegami 250,000 yen. Ichise is the Fukui business manager of Taihei Dengyo, and he previously served as the firm’s Oi operation chief. Tomita is president of Takada Kiko while Ikegami is an executive of Dream, previously known as Soshin Kogyo, a plumbing and housing equipment firm. She is also the wife of a gang leader with ties to the Kitakyushu-based crime syndicate Kudo-kai.
“Many documents showing illegal labor were found, one after another, during our search. They proved many years of shady deals,” says a senior officer with the Fukuoka Prefectural Police. The case sheds light on not just one firm or one nuclear power plant but the nuclear power industry as a whole.
Sixty-one-year-old Masaki Yoshimura (pseudonym) in Kitakyushu was dispatched to many nuclear power plants in Japan while working for a construction company for a period of 14 years that ended seven years ago. There were many companies involved in his work between his employer and general contractors such as nuclear power plant manufacturers. One of those companies was Taihei Dengyo.
Repairing plumbing was the main part of his job, but instructions came from different companies depending on which nuclear power plants he was working at. Electric power companies, operators of nuclear power plants, paid general contractors a daily pay of 100,000 yen, but Yoshimura got only 18,000 yen. More than 80 percent of his daily wage was siphoned off.
“It’s the world of siphoning off. It’s a system in which big companies make money handsomely,” he says.
The nuclear job scandal involving Taihei Dengyo uncovered the fact that illegal labor supports nuclear power businesses. Fake contracts and unlicensed dispatches of workers are peppered with acts of siphoning off pay. These practices have put laborers in an unstable position and invited crime syndicates’ involvement.
“The Geiger counters quickly sound, so you can’t work for so long. Fifty to 100 people have to work together. People at the bottom of society are there,” Yoshimura says.
Radiation zones are divided into a scale from A to D, and workers assigned to D, the highest radiation zone, have to wear protective gear and layers of gloves. “Competent workers brought with them other workers’ Geiger counters so they would not to exceed the dosage limits and to improve their work efficiency,” Yoshimura said.
Stopping a nuclear reactor for just one day reportedly results in a loss to the owner of 100 million yen. A retired electric power company official says, “Electric power companies have repeatedly requested shorter inspections. But to shorten checks without changing the number of items to inspect, you have to either cut corners or force workers to work throughout the night,” he says.
According to the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, about 90 percent of some 83,000 nuclear power plant workers who were exposed to radiation in fiscal 2009 were not employed directly by nuclear power plant operators. Their average radiation dosage was 3.6 times the level suffered by employees of those operators.
The Committee on Poverty of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations last year conducted a survey of nuclear power plant workers. Lawyer Tatsuo Watanabe, a member of the committee, says, “From an ethical point of view, we should check unlawful labor at nuclear power plants that is being done for economical reasons.”
More than 1,000 workers are necessary for a regular inspection of a nuclear reactor, but postings for these jobs do not show up at job-placement offices. Most part-time nuclear workers find employment through personal connections and introductions. A labor bureau official says: “(The connections) are extra careful to not hurt the electric power companies. Those with strong personal connections have strong solidarity and are tightlipped. They are in a world of their own.”
Mainichi Shimbun, February 3, 2012
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/03/20120203p2a00m0na018000c.html
Falsified labor deals rampant at Japan’s nuke plants, says suspect
A power plant construction and maintenance firm has falsified worker contracts for temporary labor at nuclear plants across Japan for years, according to statements by one of the company’s employees charged with involvement in the fraudulent agreements.
Hideo Ichise, 58, and two other people were indicted on Feb. 2 for the dispatch of a worker to the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture under a false contract, a violation of the Employment Security Law. Ichise’s employer Taihei Dengyo Kaisha Ltd. — where he now serves as business manager after a stint as the firm’s Oi operations chief — along with Fukui Prefecture-based plumbing company Takada Kiko were also charged.
Investigators have discovered a dossier on falsified worker contracts at more than 30 Taihei Dengyo branches, further suggesting the firm has been involved in illicit labor deals involving nuclear power plants across the country.
Police have furthermore discovered cases of various personnel agencies siphoning off the wages of temporary workers at nuclear plants, while involvement of the Kitakyushu-based crime syndicate Kudo-kai has also been uncovered.
According to investigative sources, Ichise said, “We have participated in (illicit nuclear labor practices at the Oi plant) for many years. We have been doing the same thing at other nuclear power plants.”
Taihei Dengyo’s operating officer was also quoted as telling police, “Our company alone cannot hire many workers, so we (falsified labor contracts) knowing it was illegal.”
Other sources involved in work at nuclear power plants have provided similar information, including one Saga Prefecture man in his 50s who worked at the Genkai Nuclear Power Plant there during regular inspections about three years ago. He was dispatched to a construction company by a temp agent called simply “boss.” Although there was ostensibly a contract with the construction company and the man worked directly under a construction company employee, “boss” apparently took 5,000 yen out of his 13,000-yen daily wage.
A year earlier, the Saga man had also worked at the Genkai plant during a regular check as an employee of an electrical firm for about two months. A fellow worker in his 50s had to take more than two weeks off after injuring his ankle at the plant but had to pay his own medical bills.
In this case, the Saga man worked under the guise of the electrical firm. “There were gangsters among those bosses, and sometimes two bosses raked off my wages,” the Saga man recalls.
A temporary personnel agency operator says, “Parent companies send us requests for a certain number of workers, and we submit a list of people who then go and work under those parent companies at nuclear power plants. We give the workers their wages after deducting our share.” Another agent told the Mainichi, “There are times when gangsters are involved in recruiting workers. It is easy for us to hire them because they save us the trouble.”
It is not clear why such unlawful labor practices have been overlooked. An inspector at a labor standards office stated, “It is very difficult to get a full picture of the labor practices at nuclear power plants because corporate parent-subsidiary relations change depending on their line of work. It is also difficult to conduct surprise on-site inspections of nuclear power plants because advance notification is necessary as part of antiterrorism measures.”
Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano instructed electric power companies to abide by the law and bar crime syndicates from involvement in work at nuclear power plants. However Takayoshi Yoroi, a professor emeritus of labor law at Ryukoku University, says, “Falsified labor contracts have been rampant for so long. If the government is dead serious about stamping them out, nuclear power plants will stop running. Power companies and general contractors simply have to directly hire workers, but I wonder if they have the determination to do so.”
Mainichi Shimbun, February 3, 2012
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/04/20120204p2a00m0na016000c.html
Gov’t not adding up nuclear workers’ radiation doses when not at work
TOKYO (Kyodo) — The health ministry has not added up the radiation doses received by workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant while they were evacuated or are not at work, ministry officials and supporters of the workers said Saturday, prompting concerns about adequacy of the current radiation control.
In a similar manner, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare will not add up radiation doses while workers engage in decontamination efforts around the badly damaged plant in Fukushima Prefecture, which will intensify in the near future.
The ministry currently keeps track of only the radiation doses for nuclear workers when they engage in work. The maximum radiation doses for nuclear workers and those involved in decontamination efforts are 100 millisieverts over five years and 50 millisieverts a year.
The officials said the ministry takes the position that in controlling radiation doses, it makes a distinction between work and personal life because measures taken to alleviate the doses differ between them.
“No matter where they are exposed to radiation, it’s the same thing for an individual,” said Katsuyasu Iida, who works on securing the health of nuclear plant workers as head of the secretariat for the Tokyo Occupational Safety and Health Center.
Noting that the health ministry is developing a database to record workers’ radiation doses separately from the one at the Radiation Effects Association, Iida said that by employing such a database, workers’ total radiation doses “should be strictly controlled by adding up doses received when they are not at work.”
Those who enter radiation-controlled zones at nuclear plants have a booklet that keeps track of their radiation doses while at work. The data are sent to the Radiation Effects Association in Tokyo to keep track of workers’ accumulated doses at whatever plants they go to work at or whatever employer they work for. Those whose radiation doses exceed limits are barred from further work.
All workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant currently carry dosimeters while they work or move between the plant and an accident response base nearby. Radiation doses during evacuations following the accident and while away from work are being projected on the basis of radiation levels at observation points.
In its report last December, the Fukushima prefectural government estimated that evacuees from 12 municipalities around the plant were externally exposed to up to 19 millisieverts of radiation over the four months from the start of the disaster following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
It is also possible that plant workers who lived nearby were exposed to radiation in the period after the start of the accident as they went about their lives.
Kyodo Press, January 22, 2012
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/01/22/20120122p2g00m0dm065000c.html