“Contract Workers in the Post-3/11 Cleanup”
Machiko Osawa (Japan Women’s University)
It has been reported that many contract workers hired by the
subcontracting companies are hired to clean up the nuclear reactors in
Fukushima.
(1)Proportion of subcontractors in the total
In general, many contract workers have been employed to work in
the nuclear plants in Japan. Figure 1 represents amount of radiation
exposure of regular workers and contract workers employed by utilities from
1970 to 2008. The amount of exposure has increased rapidly in the late 70’s
and declined in the 80’s and increased again in the 90’s.
This histogram also shows that radiation exposure for regular
workers at electric companies is very low in 2008 as only 3% were exposed
while the rate was much higher for contract workers.
In 2009, it is reported that 85,000 workers are working in nuclear
plants, among which only 10,000 are hired by the electric company as regular
workers, about 12% of the total work force, so that 88% of the work force
are contract workers.
In the case of Fukushima No.1 plant, 1100 workers are TEPCO regular
workers and 9000 are contract workers. So that about 90% of the workers
at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are contract workers.
(2)How many subcontracting companies are involved?
Mainichi newspaper on July 25, 2011 reported that only 374 out of
total 2894 workers are TEPCO employees (about 13%). Most of the workers
are hired by companies contracted by TEPCO. 1000 workers who work at the
Fukushima plants are hired by GE and Hitachi GE New York energy and
Toshiba…the companies that built the reactors. For Hitachi GE, half of
the workers are hired by a subcontract company and half are hired by the
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either Hitachi or Hitachi related companies. The Situation in Toshiba is
similar.
According to Shuji Shimizu of Fukushima University, 29 companies
are directly contracted by TEPCO. These contracted companies further
subcontract the work to 169 companies (These are called primary
subcontracting companies. These 169 companies further subcontract jobs to
288 subcontracting companies (secondary subcontracting). In addition,
there are 116 tertiary subcontracting companies. And 16 fourth level
subcontracting companies. All together 619 companies are involved in this
subcontracting involving 7108 workers at Fukushima.
Some of the Nuclear plants in Japan use 7 or 8 levels of
subcontractors. The lower the level of the subcontractors, the smaller the
scale of the companies, some only hiring few workers.
Masaki Kazama, Toyo Keizai reporter says some of the subcontractors
are just sending (dispatching) workers but not supervising them. By law
these subcontractors are required to supervise workers they hire, but
instead of this they are dispatching these workers to the worksite.
This
is illegal and in Japan it is called “disguised contracting out work”.
Kazama points out that it is difficult for the labor safety board
to detect whether disguised contracting out is taking place at the plant.
This is because entering into the nuclear plants is too dangerous, so that
the safety agency has to
announce to the electric companies beforehand
the dates for inspections. This makes it easy for companies to cover up
wrong doing inside the plants.
(3) Who are working at the nuclear plant?
Subcontracting companies post job openings for
cleanup job at
public job placement center. For this job, the company does not require
any specific skills or level of education or qualification and there is
no age limit, so anybody can apply.
Recently, one of the subcontracting companies recruited two men
who are in their 60’s living in Osaka’s Airin district without explaining
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that this is a cleanup job in Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant. The Job ad said
that company is looking for the truck driver to work in Onagawa town in
Miyagi prefecture. However, the job was really a cleanup job at Fukushima
No.1 plant.
They are working outside the reactors but within the Nuclear power plants.
It was not until after their fourth day of work that the company measured
their radiation exposure, but the machine was not working properly. They
brought complaint to the labor welfare center and found out that they were
deceived and forced to work inside the Fukushima nuclear plant without
proper safety precautions.
They said that there was no interview when they were hired, no
medical checkup and a Safety video was shown only once at the beginning
when they started working. In addition, No labor contract was signed, so
they were not enrolled in employment insurance..a way for the company to
save money but again not paying heed to the interests of the workers. They
were exposed to high levels of radiation without any social protection.
Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare is investigating such cases,
but abuses are hard to detect in the nuclear plants because access is
restricted. There are suspicions that this is a widespread phenomenon
precisely because contract workers are being hired to take on the dangerous
tasks of the cleanup
(4) Low wage rates
There are Usually an average of 3000 workers working in Fukushima
and they are paid Yen 15,000 a day. However, on August 4th of Kyodo Tsushin
reported that the original contracting company stated that
they pay
100,000 yen per person per day.
However, actual payment was only 10,000 ~15,000.Since owner of the
subcontracting companies take about 15 % out of worker’s payments, workers
lower down the subcontracting chain get paid much less and Some of the
younger workers received only 8000 yen per day.
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(6)Safety Check
It is reported that 6 TEPCO workers received radiation exceeded
the level set by the government. However, company do not know 198 contract
workers whereabouts as of July 20th of 2011 and not able to test their
exposure level.
There was controversy on March 15th when the governmemnt abruptly called
for the withdrawal of contract workers from the cleanup operations so that
it could increase the legally allowed levels of radiation exposure. The
increase was explained as a measure to ensure that enough workers could
stay on the job to bring the nuclear crisis under control by restoring
cooling functions. On March 17th the government again increased the
radiation exposure, actually doubling it. So between March 15-March 17th
the legally allowed radiation exposure was increased by a factor of
5.Apparently there was a shortage of radiation badges to monitor exposure
levels so worker safety was put at risk.
On March 24 contract workers being sent into the pools of heavily
contaminated water that had accumulated in the turbine building basement
next to reactor #3
burns after
being
because of the cooling operations but were treated for
exposed to radiation because they were wearing only
sneakers. Nobody had thought about giving them protective clothing or high
boots.
Tepco was also criticized for lax management of employee radiation exposure
and data after losing contact with some 180 laborers who were quickly hired
to deal with the power plant crisis.
The nonprofit organization Tokyo Occupational Safety and Health Center
made a freedom of information request, concerning a TEPCO document it
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submitted to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency dated April 25, about
radiation exposure of workers. At that time TEPCO estimated that a total of
1600 workers would exceed the legal limit due to the severity of the accident,
which later TEPCO admitted had involved meltdowns at three of the
reactors.
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