Trainee system a cover for using illegal workers

By Shin Hara, Japan Today, 21 July 2002

TOKYO—In a hot and humid plating factory in Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture, in central Japan, Jarill (pseudonym), 22, lost his left index finger when it got caught in a machine.

It appeared to be a typical labor accident, but the Sanjo Labor Standards Inspection Office decided in May not to pay him worker's compensation, saying he is a trainee and cannot be recognized as a worker.

Jarill, who graduated from an electrical engineering training school in Indonesia, applied to be a trainee in Japan in order to study advanced Japanese technology.

Through the Indonesian Labor Ministry and the Association for International Manpower Development of Medium and Small Enterprises, Japan, he was admitted to the plant two years ago.

I wanted to be trained as an electrical engineer, but I was told to go to a plating plant immediately before leaving for Japan. I said OK because I couldn't go to Japan if I rejected the offer, he said.

In fact, the plant gave him no training but instead ordered him to engage in production work. He was also obliged to do overtime which is prohibited during training.

Kuniko Ozama, an official of the All United Workers Union to which Jarill belongs, said, The trainee system is used as a cover for employing trainees to do simple labor at low wages.

I learned nothing as a trainee. My handicap remains, and my future is desperate even if I return home, Jarill said. He has filed a complaint with the labor standards inspection office against its decision.

Dante (pseudonym), a 30-year-old Philippine national who became a trainee last year, received Japanese-language lessons in Manila for six weeks and for 10 days in Tokyo. He was then assigned to a construction company in the Kanto district, but has been forced to do heavy labor at construction sites.

His overtime pay is quite small, and when he expressed his dissatisfaction he was told, Go back home.

They might think we don't have brains. I couldn't endure that any longer, he said. In March, he and a senior colleague fled from their dormitory.

At present, Dante works for another company where he receives 12,000 yen in daily salary against the trainee allowance of 120,000 yen per month. He asked his former company to pay his unpaid wages, but the Philippine organization which sent him to Japan as a trainee has asked him to pay a fine. Negotiations with the organization are under way.

Despite a drastically declining labor population due to fewer births and increases in the number of elderly people, the government is taking a basic policy of not accepting simple laborers from abroad, while expanding the trainee system.

If foreign workers are needed, the government should approve their entry with working visas, Ozawa said.

The trainee system was officially established in 1990. Trainees usually receive lessons at smaller enterprises and farming households for one year, and some of them try to improve their techniques while working for two more years as technical interns.

Last year, about 59,000 trainees arrived in Japan, and some 16,000 became technical interns. (Kyodo News)