As efforts to tame the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant continue, laborers from as far as Kyushu have been dispatched there under illegal labor deals and forced to work inside at least one of the crippled plant’s highly contaminated reactor buildings.
A man in his 40s from Nagasaki Prefecture recently related how he carried lead sheets weighing some 20 kilograms each up as high as the sixth floor of one building. A Geiger counter dangling from his neck sounded noisily and his mask misted over as temperatures climbed above 30 degrees Celsius.
“I was really angry because I was treated like a slave,” Yosuke Nakayama, a pseudonym, said of his some 40 days at the Fukushima plant, starting in July last year.
The lead sheets were installed inside the plant’s No. 1 reactor building to block radiation. Nakayama, however, was not angry about the hard work, but about the treatment he received upon returning home to Nagasaki.
He said he was paid 11,000 yen per day he worked for a company six layers down in a seven-layer outsourcing pyramid, with only the top-tier firm receiving orders directly from plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. He had been promised 14,000 yen per day, and had also been assured he would not have to enter the reactor buildings.
When Nakayama demanded an explanation for the 3,000 yen difference, his subcontractor mentioned the name of a Fukuoka-based crime syndicate.
“We don’ care if yakuza show up,” the contractor said, apparently threatening him.
A third-tier company to which Nakayama’s employer dispatched laborers via two other firms has been slapped with administrative punishments twice for its ties to crime syndicates.
Contacted by the Mainichi, Nakayama’s employer acknowledged the dispatch of workers without a license. “We received about 13,000 yen from a fifth-tier firm and we’d lose money unless we deduct expenses,” the company said.
Businesspeople familiar with the Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Genkai Nuclear Power Plant in Saga Prefecture say a significant number of laborers have been sent to Fukushima.
A utility work firm in Saga has been recruiting laborers from across Kyushu since last December, ostensibly for work at nuclear plants in Kyushu and Shikoku. The names of about 20 laborers are written on the firm’s white board, along with their destination: “Fukushima No. 1.”
An executive of the firm says it started sending laborers to Fukushima in response to requests from its business partners. “People from Kyushu are in demand because they’re serious. We will send them again if requested.”
A Saga man in his 30s did a job similar to Nakayama’s at the Fukushima plant after being dispatched from a seventh-tier firm. He contacted the company after seeing a posting at a job-placement office and got the Fukushima job.
He received about 300,000 yen for some 40 days of work, and absorbed a radiation dose of some 10 millisieverts. “There are no jobs in my hometown, so it can’t be helped,” he says, adding he is waiting for another Fukushima assignment.