POINT OF VIEW/ Daisuke Furuta: Japan must stop exploitation of foreign trainees

The stated purpose of Japan's training and internship programs for people from developing countries is to allow entrants to acquire skills in Japan that will enrich their home countries. In 2009, some 80,000 trainees, mainly from China and Southeast Asia, entered the country on these programs.

In practice, however, many of these workers are being used as nothing more than low-wage labor.

The Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan (SMJ), a nongovernmental organization that supports foreign trainees and interns, says it has received complaints of people being required to work for an hourly wage of 300 yen ($3.2). Others said they had been banned from communicating with outsiders and were threatened with deportation if they did not toe the line.

It is common practice for these workers to deposit large amounts of "security money" with the organizations in their home countries authorized to dispatch them to Japan. These deposits often have a strong coercive effect: Trainees tend to be submissive to the Japanese organizations that accept them because of the fear of losing their deposits.

Last year, the Immigration Bureau logged only 360 cases in which there had been irregularities involving foreign trainees and interns. But, with more than 30,000 organizations accepting trainees across Japan, the bureau said, "It is impossible to check all of them."

The government is making an effort to stop the abuses.

Under a revised system to be introduced in July, dispatching organizations in home countries will be banned from requiring deposits. Labor laws, which currently only apply to foreigners in the second and third years of the three-year programs, will be extended to first-year trainees.

The Japanese "primary accepting organizations"--the go-between bodies that help run the system, such as business associations and local chambers of commerce and industry--will be required to take greater responsibility for supervising individual companies accepting trainees and interns.

However, observers familiar with the situation on the ground say the measures are unlikely to end abuses of the system.

In China, for example, there are reports of brokers rounding up applicants in rural areas. Many trainees are bound into contracts with these brokers in addition to those they sign with authorized dispatching organizations.

These brokers may also demand deposits, which raises the distinct possibility that the ban on deposits with the authorized dispatchers will become little more than window-dressing. Detecting and chasing down abuses involving third parties in foreign nations will be extremely tough.

Even if labor laws are applied from the first year, the existing labor standards inspection system is unlikely to be able to investigate all problem cases.

Ippei Torii, head of the SMJ's secretariat, said the situation was further muddied by toleration and even involvement in the abuses by supposedly responsible organizations in Japan.

"The new system ignores the fact that there are even cases in which primary accepting organizations advise on how to conceal wrongdoing," he said.

In January, the Kumamoto District Court heard a damages suit from former Chinese trainees at sewing factories, who claimed they had received abusive treatment, including illegally low wages. The court found that a Japanese "primary accepting organization" as well as the factories that directly employed the workers had been involved in malpractice.

Japan's population started to decline in 2005. The low birthrate means that Japanese society is aging at a rate never seen before in the world. As a result, many industries are braced for shortages of labor.

The shortages are already biting hard in farming and fishing industries and among small manufacturers. They are relying heavily on foreign trainees and interns. But the supply of easily abused workers is not necessarily limitless.

Journalist Mo Bangfu says the Chinese workers make up about 70 percent of the trainees.

"In 10 years, they will no longer come to Japan because of China's economic growth," Mo says.

As incomes at home rise, foreign workers are unlikely to come to a country where living expenses are high and where they are discriminated against.

The Justice Ministry, which oversees immigration and status of residence controls, continues to maintain that the system's purpose is to provide training. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is trying to crack down on unjust treatment of workers.

Meanwhile, the ministries of industry, agriculture and infrastructure are keenly aware that industries under their supervision are desperate to secure more workers. These ministries have their own reasons for supporting the training and internship system, but the bureaucrats still admit the system is defective.

No one seems to want to take the initiative to drastically reform this flawed system. I think this is because of a lack of clear political leadership on how to deal with the labor shortage, which is really the hidden function of the trainee and intern system.

Should we be using foreign workers simply as a cheap and convenient work force to cover labor shortages? Or should we see them as our neighbors? This is an issue that concerns us all. A national debate is required.

* * *

Daisuke Furuta is an Asahi Shimbun staff writer at the Foreign News Section of the Tokyo Head Office.