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Article

27 Apr 2011

Author:
Paul Jobin, director, French Center for Research on Contemporary China, Taipei Office, in Asia-Pacific Journal

Dying for TEPCO: Fukushima's Nuclear Contract Workers [Japan]

This is the first of two reports offering a worker-centered analysis of the Fukushima nuclear disaster...TEPCO is facing great difficulties in finding workers...Job offers come not from TEPCO but from Mizukami Kogyo, a company whose business is construction and cleaning maintenance. The description...[does not contain] information about danger...Rumor has it that many of the cleanup workers are burakumin (a minority group...often associated with discrimination)...[I]t would be congruent with the logic of the nuclear industry and the difficult job situation of day laborers...[T]he vast majority of those working at Fukushima 1 were...contract laborers...[I]n 2009, Japan’s nuclear industry recruited more than 80,000 contract workers against 10,000 regular employees...[T]he nuclear industry nurtures a heavy culture of secrecy concerning the number of irradiated workers... [refers also to General Electric, Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi]

Part of the following timelines

Japan: Expose on labour situation at TEPCO's Fukushima nuclear plant; contract workers most exposed to radiation, new recruits may be from "outcaste" group, no hazard warning in job ads

Reports on worker complaint at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant - May 2011