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System of Disposable Laborers

COLUMN ONE
Almost 90% of workers in Japan's nuclear power industry are subcontracted. Poorly trained,
they often are assigned hazardous duties. Tokaimura accident triggers intensified scrutiny.
December 30, 1999|SONNI EFRON | TIMES STAFF WRITER
Kunio Murai was a struggling farmer from the wrong side of the tracks when he was recruited to
work as a day laborer in a nuclear power plant near this farm town. The pay was triple what he
could make anywhere else, and he was told that the work would be janitorial.
One day in 1970, he and a co-worker were ordered into a room to mop up a leak of radioactive
cooling water. They wore ordinary rubber gloves, but no masks or additional protection. Murai
recalls wrapping a cleaning cloth around a pipe that was spewing steam. They worked for two
hours, and afterward the needle on Murai's radiation meter pointed off the scale.

"I thought it was broken," Murai said. It wasn't. Within six months, he said, his joints swelled
painfully and his teeth and hair fell out.
Murai is one of tens of thousands of people who have worked over the years as subcontractors in
Japanese nuclear power plants, doing the dirty, difficult and potentially dangerous jobs shunned
by regular employees.
In the wake of Japan's worst nuclear accident, a nuclear fission reaction Sept. 30 at a uranium
processing plant in Tokaimura, ugly allegations have surfaced of labor abuses, lackadaisical
attitudes toward safety, inadequate worker training and lax enforcement by regulators in the
country's nuclear industry.
Workers at the JCO Co. plant in Tokaimura, about 80 miles northeast of Tokyo, were mixing
uranium by hand in stainless steel buckets to save time. The ensuing nuclear reaction exposed as
many as 150 people to radiation, according to the final report issued this month by Japan's
Nuclear Safety Commission. One worker died from a lethal dose of radiation, and another
remains hospitalized.
From his hospital bed, at least one worker, a regular employee who was supposed to have
undergone safety training, told investigators he had no idea that what he was doing was
dangerous. But plant officials later admitted that they did know--and had created an illegal
operations manual ordering the hand-mixing to save time and money.
The revelations shocked the public but did not surprise Murai, who tells horrifying tales of his
brief stint in the Tsuruga nuclear power plant. And it did not surprise anti-nuclear activists, who
allege that several thousand day laborers--no one knows exactly how many--continue to be
recruited each year by the small subcontractors that supply manual labor for nuclear power plants.
Some allegedly are hired by shady labor brokers who drive trucks to the skid rows of Tokyo,
Yokohama and Osaka, offering $100 for a day's work. The takers are drifters, the down-and-out,
or foreigners willing to do whatever it takes to earn quick yen.
Government, Union Deny Knowledge
Government and union officials say they have no knowledge of such goings-on. They insist that
Japan's nuclear power plants are clean, safe and well regulated.
But public trust in such statements had begun to erode even before the accident. Five nuclear-
related accidents and mishaps and several failed cover-ups have occurred since 1995. And
officials concede that supervision has been inadequate at nuclear facilities other than power
plants, such as fuel reprocessing plants and laboratories. Those facilities were presumed to be
safe before the Tokaimura accident.
After the accident, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi ordered an inspection of all such facilities, and
the results made fresh and frightening headlines: 25 serious violations were found at nine
locations. Lapses included improper handling of radioactive material and failure to conduct
proper safety training, perform required medical checkups and report radiation exposure.
The Nuclear Safety Commission later recommended that Japan abandon its long-held attitude
that nuclear power is "absolutely safe" and take stringent measures to prevent future accidents.
But activists also want the government to investigate the system of subcontracting for manual
labor in nuclear power facilities--a system that they allege is discriminatory and dangerous.
The elite engineers and highly skilled unionized workers at the top of the labor pyramid, who
work for the blue-chip giants that build and operate Japanese nuclear power plants, are carefully
monitored and protected from radiation exposure.
However, the majority of nuclear plant workers are employed by subcontractors or their
subcontractors, an arrangement that allows big corporations to avoid major layoffs of their own
people in hard times. Critics say this system diffuses accountability, makes it impossible to keep
tabs on the health of workers and places responsibility for safety with smaller, less visible and
financially weaker companies.
The workers at the bottom of the socioeconomic food chain--including those allegedly hired by
the day from skid rows--receive the least safety education and the highest radiation doses.
According to data from Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, of the 71,376 Japanese who are
employed in the nuclear power industry, 63,420, or almost 89%, work for subcontractors. It is
these employees who receive more than 90% of all radiation exposure.
Moreover, the casual laborers included among those subcontractor employees have scant legal
protection, activists charge. And historically, they have received little or no compensation when
accidents or illnesses occur.
"Nuclear labor in Japan is a human rights problem," charged photojournalist and author Kenji
Higuchi, a nuclear foe who has spent 27 years documenting alleged safety abuses. "The whole
system is based on discrimination. There are a lot of people right now who are doing the same
jobs as Murai-san did.
"When you go inside a nuclear power plant, it means you are going to be exposed to radiation,"
he said. "You are paid to be exposed."
According to the Federation of Electric Power Industry Workers' Unions of Japan, a pro-nuclear
organization that represents about 26,000 nuclear power plant employees, the average annual
radiation dose received by all workers has dropped from 3.5 millisieverts per worker in 1980 to
1.1 millisieverts each in 1996. That is far below the Japanese legal dose limit of 50 millisieverts
per year per laborer.
As for the subcontractors, "It is true that they are getting more radiation exposure than regular
employees, but that doesn't mean the subcontractors are getting unsafe doses," said Hiroyuki
Shoji, a spokesman for the union. "Their doses are still well within the safe range."
However, critics say official statistics do not express the realities of the working conditions--or
the potential health risks--faced by the nonunionized casual laborers who toil in the hot bowels
of the reactors.
According to Yuko Fujita, an antinuclear activist and professor of physical chemistry at Keio
University in Yokohama, about 1,000 day laborers were recruited two years ago to replace a
cracked shroud on a reactor in Fukushima prefecture. The job was so dangerous that workers
could toil inside for only three minutes at a time. Nine more aging nuclear plants will need
shroud replacements by 2001, Fujita said.
The day-laborer system is perfectly legal so long as the workers do not receive more than their
annual doses of radiation--even if they receive that dose in three minutes, the professor noted.
However, Japan's permitted radiation dose is higher than international standards. The
International Commission on Radiological Protection in 1990 recommended that each worker
receive no more than 100 millisieverts over five years, but Japan has been slow to change its
limit of 50 millisieverts per year. Japan will belatedly adopt the new standard in 2001, the Labor
Ministry said.
In the U.S., federal regulations prohibit workers from entering any of the country's 103
commercial nuclear plants, even for temporary and low-skill jobs, without background checks
and training, say officials of industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The training programs--which are required as well for employees of subcontractors--teach
workers about the site, nuclear and radiation safety, reporting requirements and access rules.
Tom Cochran, an analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group,
agreed that U.S. federal oversight has apparently prevented the kind of labor practices that have
occurred in Japan.
"I've never seen any evidence of that kind of thing," he said.
Fliers Warn About Dangers
Fujita, who is appalled by what he sees as dangerous exploitation in Japan, has distributed fliers
over the last two years to the homeless and day laborers on skid rows, warning them against
taking jobs in nuclear power plants.
But some casual workers are beyond caring about exposure, according to Higuchi. Because day
laborers are usually fired as soon as they reach their legal radiation limit, some try to conceal
their true exposure; others try hiring on at other plants under false names, he said. They've even
been given a nickname: "nuclear gypsies."
Higuchi charges that, since the mid-1970s, he has learned of about 160 nuclear plant workers
who have suffered health problems that appear to be the result of radiation exposure but were not
recognized by officials. Of these, four were day laborers who had worked at more than one
nuclear plant. All four have died, he said.
The only officially recognized radiation victims were four other workers who developed
leukemia, the only disease designated a worker hazard under Japanese law. Those four also died.
Workers who develop other illnesses--even other cancers associated with radiation exposure--are
ineligible.
The Japanese courts have never awarded compensation to any other workers for radiation
exposure. In litigation-shy Japan, however, most cases never get near court.
"If you are still alive and working for a company, you are afraid of ruining your relationship with
the company by raising these issues," Michiko Shimahashi explained.
Her son, Nobuyuki Shimahashi, died of leukemia at age 29 after working for nine years as a
subcontractor at a nuclear plant. She won compensation only after a lengthy legal struggle.
Murai, the farmer turned day laborer, is not officially recognized as a radiation victim and
receives no government benefits. Even after his teeth fell out, the doctor to whom the plant
manager introduced him insisted that his medical problems were unrelated to radiation exposure.
Murai's wife ultimately accepted $60,000 from the plant, and he never filed a lawsuit. A co-
worker apologized to him years later, confessing that he had received about $20,000 in exchange
for a promise not to testify if Murai ever did sue.
Murai's story about life at the bottom of the nuclear labor pyramid shed an eerie light on industry
practices that are under fresh scrutiny since the Tokaimura incident.
He recalls taking part in what amounted to radiation relay races. One by one, workers would run
into a "hot" room for just five or six seconds each, turn a screw or perform another brief task and
then rush back out, he said. A plant employee armed with a clipboard and a whistle made sure no
one stayed in too long.
Workers were supposed to dispose of the rubber gloves used while cleaning up radiation but
thought that a terrible waste. They sneaked the gloves home for their wives to use when washing
dishes or working in the fields, Murai said.
"I hear things have gotten stricter since my day, but I'm not too sure," said Murai, now 66.
"When I read the newspapers about Tokaimura, I get the impression that things haven't changed
much in the last 30 years."
Others say overall safety standards have improved--but someone still has to do the radioactive
dirty work.
Murai, a burakumin, or descendant of the outcast class in Japan, said these days the hired hands
in nuclear power plants are no longer farmers. Rather, he said, they include Koreans--some of
whom reportedly lack proper visas and thus are in no position to quit or complain--along with
Brazilian immigrants of Japanese ancestry and others living on the economic margins.
A spokesman for the Tsuruga plant where Murai once worked, Yoshihiro Eto, said the plant does
not monitor the status or health of its subcontractors' work force. However, union officials said
even day laborers are required to undergo one day of safety training before they work inside the
plants, and a registry system has been instituted in an attempt to prevent them from exceeding
radiation limits even if they do wander from plant to plant.
The revelations of Tokaimura highlight the need to investigate the nuclear labor system, said
lawmaker Tomiko Okazaki of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.
In an unusually combative question-and-answer session in parliament in October, Okazaki
grilled a Labor Ministry official about allegations made by former power plant worker Norio
Hirai, who died of lung cancer in 1996.
Hirai was an engineer for a subcontractor who went inside reactors to supervise his workers.
Before he died, Hirai alleged that nuclear plant workers slept through their required safety
training videos; that many were so uneducated that they stripped off their masks or other
protective gear when working in the fierce heat of the reactors; and that nuclear gypsies and men
who already have had children were routinely given the most dangerous jobs.
The debate is not just about safety but also about the degree to which regulators have allowed the
nuclear industry to operate on what amounts to the honor system. Regulators hadn't set foot
inside the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura in 10 years.
In 1996, Okazaki forced government officials to admit to parliament that there was no such thing
as a surprise inspection by regulators at a nuclear power plant. She thought that she had extracted
a promise to institute such snap inspections, only to discover after Tokaimura that visits still are
announced a day ahead of time. Ministry officials say they do not have their own radiation
protection gear and must make prior arrangements to borrow it from the plant before they can
enter the reactor.
Two Labor Ministry officials said they are studying whether more aggressive enforcement is
needed. They said employers are responsible for reporting the radiation exposure their workers
receive and conceded that regulators do not check whether the exposure reports are accurate, or
whether company-sponsored medical checkups are adequate.
"To think that these companies want to kill their workers is hard for us to imagine," one of the
officials said. "Of course, we must think of the possibility that they might lie, but we cannot
regulate on the assumption that every one of these companies has evil intentions.
"There is work that exposes people to radiation that has to be done so long as you want to sustain
the current energy supply," the official added. "They say it's discrimination, but there is freedom
of work in our country, and if people don't want to do these jobs they can quit. If nobody wants
to do the work, eventually the industry will have to be shut down."
*
Staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Nuclear Power in Japan
Japan relies on 51 nuclear power plants scattered across the nations four main islands to provide
37% of its electricity. As many as 20 other plants are on the drawing boards.

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http://articles.latimes.com/print/1999/dec/30/news/mn-49042