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]