Immigrant workers in Japan caught in a real racket | The Japan Times Online 5/21/08 9:34 AM

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Sunday, July 1, 2007

MEDIA MIX

Immigrant workers in Japan caught in a

real racket
By PHILIP BRASOR
The debate over whether Japan should allow foreign workers in to
make up for current and future labor shortages is dominated by the
so-called foreign trainee program, which is overseen by the Japan
International Training Cooperation Organization (JITCO). The program
is itself the subject of a debate, which boils down to the age-old
Japanese dynamic of honne vs. tatemae.
The tatemae (given reason) of the program is to bring workers from
developing countries to Japan to learn Japanese techniques that they
can later put to use back home. The honne (real reason) of the
program is to legally let small and medium Japanese companies import
cheap labor. According to a recent series of articles in the Asahi
Shimbun, the Japanese public for the most part still buys the tatemae
explanation, even though the media has been reporting for years that
many foreign trainees come to Japan for the express purpose of
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The defendant was a plumber in China Tokyo Transfer Guide
who made the equivalent of 7,500 yen a month, and his purpose in Metro resource for fares, travel time and transfers

coming to Japan was to earn a lot of money in a short time. However,

because of trainee program rules, he wasn't able to work and earn as Poll Most read stories Editors' picks
much as he hoped, and he went on strike, demanding that he be A piece of your mind
allowed to work overtime at the pig farm where he'd been placed. The Real characters
official in charge of the training center that brought him to Japan
Japan loves its cute characters, but which of
responded by trying to have him deported. In a fit of anger, the these do you think is the most bizarre mascot
worker killed the official and injured two others. around? (Click the names for a peek at each one.)

Nara's Buddha-like boy with antlers

According to his lawyers, in order to come to Japan to "receive
The Tokyo Tower's Noppon Brothers
training," the defendant had borrowed more than 1 million yen in order
The Kagoshima Prefectural Police
to pay the security deposit, transportation costs, and various non- department's Chest-kun
refundable fees associated with the assignment. He thought he could The Chiba Prefecture Environmental
Regeneration Foundation's Chiba-ken
pay back the debt quickly by working overtime, but according to Prince Pickles of Japan's Self-Defense
JITCO regulations a trainee is not classified as a worker for the first Forces
year. Since normal labor laws do not apply to foreign trainees until the

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Immigrant workers in Japan caught in a real racket | The Japan Times Online 5/21/08 9:34 AM

second year (when they become "interns"), they can be paid less than
Total Votes : 535
the minimum wage. View past polls

Most people believe that potential trainees pay their fees to brokers in
China, and they do. But according to the Asahi, the worker on trial Most blogged stories on JTO
paid his fees to the Chiba training center, which has set up its own 1 . Stan Lee's marvelous manga plans
dispatch company in China to recruit trainees. Though such a system View blogs link to this story
2 . Fukuda sets $10 billion climate aid for
turns the training center into a broker at best and a trafficker at
Africa
worst, there is no specific JITCO rule that says dispatch companies
View blogs link to this story
cannot profit from trainees. 3 . Import - dependent Japan fears food
For tatemae purposes, businesses cannot directly request foreign crisis: report
View blogs link to this story
workers from JITCO. They must go through local organizations, which
are usually trade or industry associations. Each of these groups pay Blog Search

JITCO 100,000 yen a year, while each member company pays 50,000
yen a year. In a June 1 article, the Mainichi Shimbun reported that 925
such organizations comprising 9,857 companies paid these fees to
JITCO in 2001. By 2005 the numbers had increased to 1,493 groups
and more than 17,000 companies. JITCO's revenues for 2006 topped
1.2 billion yen, which is why its budget from the government has been
steadily decreasing.
The Mainichi contends that as JITCO has become more self-sufficient,
it has taken on the culture of a private company. Some industry
officials told the newspaper that as more associations join, JITCO feels
it has to treat them as "customers," which means JITCO is more likely
to look the other way with regard to common illegal practices such as
confiscating trainee passports and 14-hour work days. One employer
said appreciatively that JITCO calls him beforehand to tell him when
they are coming for a surprise inspection.
JITCO has even set up an insurance system with 11 major companies
that brings in about 100 million yen annually. Workers pay premiums
of 27-37,000 yen a year. The average "allowance" for first-year
trainees is 66,000 yen a month.
A racket by any other name wouldn't smell as sweet. JITCO was
originally the brainchild of five different government ministries that
have filled its staff with retired bureaucrats ever since. Three of these
ministries seem to have realized that the program's real raison d'e^tre
has become too obvious. The justice ministry wants to get rid of the
trainee system and allow foreign workers into Japan for limited
periods, while the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the
health ministry want to keep the system and merely give it a tweak.
Missing from the debate are the workers themselves. The irony is that
there are foreign trainees who join the program because they really
want to acquire skills, but most of them end up performing manual
labor on farms or in factories. Regardless of their intentions, the
workers always lose. If they want to earn a lot of money, the system
denies them the opportunity to do so; and if they want to come to
learn a skill, the system is not equipped to do that, either.
For balance, the Asahi interviewed the director of a sewing industry
association in Hiroshima that receives trainees. He says his program
genuinely transfers skills to developing countries, but he also insists
that the foreign trainee system is "indispensable" to small Japanese
companies. Without it, these companies would be forced to move
overseas. It sounds like a threat, but what's the difference between
using cheap foreign workers in Japan and using them in a foreign
country? The difference is that in Japan you can make more money
off of them.

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