The family of a Chinese man who died while taking part in a government training program at a metal processing firm in Ibaraki Prefecture has filed a \57.5 million damages suit, arguing he was killed by overwork.
Jiang Xiaodong's family said he arrived in Japan as a trainee in 2005 and died of cardiac arrest in June 2008 at age 31 after working more than 180 hours of overtime a month.
The suit, filed Friday with the Mito District Court, names the firm, Fuji Denka Kogyo, and an intermediary agency, as the defendants.
It is the first lawsuit ever concerning the death of a foreign trainee or intern due to overwork
The family says the Itako-based company paid only \300 an hour for overtime while falsifying time cards and wage records to hide the excessive working hours from regulators.
The intermediary agency, Shiraho Kyodo Kumiai, neglected to properly supervise the company, the family claims.
A local labor office said in November that Jiang's death was caused by overwork.
国際結婚のカップルだが、仕事に対する男女間の役割に関する考えは典型的なアメリカあるいはこの場合カナダ。夫が仕事ばっかリに夢中になってると、結婚している楽しみがなくなり、もっと一緒にいる時間を大切にしてくれる別の男性を探して、とっとと離婚するわよと夫に迫る。それも冗談ではないから、どんなに収入がよくて気に入っている仕事でも、離婚を選ぶか仕事を選ぶかで選択を余儀なくされる。これが伝統的な日本人夫婦だったら、こんな問題ははじめから起こらないだろう。
******
What do you think of each other's jobs?
Kohei: Mel should do whatever she wants to do. I don't believe in only women doing housework. It doesn't matter whether you're a man or woman, you should do both housework and your job. We want to enjoy both, and make life worthwhile.
Mel: You know, I don't work for money. It's OK if Kohei wants to earn money, but he should definitely enjoy his work. I felt that he was too busy working for Dell, doing a lot of overtime, so I advised him to change jobs. What's the meaning in being married if your spouse comes home late and you don't see each other very much?
アメリカの労働組合事情
****
For U.S. unions, holiday begins somber election countdown
By James B. Kelleher
CHICAGO | Sun Sep 2, 2012 3:09pm EDT
CHICAGO (Reuters) - After suffering a string of defeats in 2012, U.S. union leaders have little to celebrate, or to look forward to, as they mark the Labor Day holiday on Monday.
Stung by losses in former strongholds such as Wisconsin and Indiana, organized labor has pledged to spend more than $100 million to help President Barack Obama win re-election over Republican nominee Mitt Romney and reverse the Republican Party sweep of state legislatures two years ago.
But as the United States pauses for a national holiday honoring the union movement, there is a growing sense that labor's ability to deliver politically is fading just as it faces what could be its most important election in 80 years.
Organized labor's inability to twist arms of Democratic allies such as California Governor Jerry Brown and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in recent pension fights has observers questioning whether it can deliver Michigan, Wisconsin or Ohio -- all battleground states run by Republican governors -- to the Democrats this fall.
"This is a very difficult Labor Day for union leaders. All they can really do is talk about labor history -- what there was rather than what there is or what there will be," said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Among labor leaders and experts, the November 6 election is seen as the most important since 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt defeated President Herbert Hoover and pushed pro-labor reforms into law as part of his New Deal program.
The Republicans, who wrapped up their nominating convention on Thursday, produced a platform more hostile to organized labor than any they have put forward in modern history, said Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the left-leaning Century Foundation.
The platform calls for a national "right-to-work" law, a business-friendly, anti-labor measure that would prohibit union contracts from requiring workers to pay dues or other fees to the union.
In the 27 states without right-to-work laws, employees in union-represented workplaces are required to pay dues and fees.
The Republican platform also drops language from previous party planks that endorsed workers' right to unionize and characterizes collective bargaining by public employees as a threat to state and local government finances.
"It's a declaration of war on labor," Kahlenberg said.
1-3
The Democratic convention, which starts on Tuesday, is sure to produce a more union-friendly platform. However, Obama's track record on labor issues has disappointed some unions and left a palpable enthusiasm gap among rank-and-file members.
The administration's "Race to the Top" education reforms, for instance, designed to boost student performance, are reviled by many unionized teachers because of the emphasis they place on standardized tests and charter schools.
"The Democrats have sold us out, and there's a real questioning of the role the Democrats can play going forward," said Betty Maloney, a retired school counselor from Newark, New Jersey, who protested an appearance by Vice President Joe Biden at a recent teachers' union conference in Detroit.
As a result, organized labor's focus on the election reflects more an opposition to what Romney and the Republicans might do than an endorsement of Obama's track record.
"To me, Mitt Romney represents the wholesale capitulation to the interests of big businesses that don't want any unions in this country," said Roberta Lynch, deputy director of Council 31 for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Chicago.
The location of the Democratic convention, in Charlotte, North Carolina, also rankles some. North Carolina is a right-to-work state with the lowest union penetration of the 50 states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That snub aside, unions view the vote as a referendum on the direction of the country and are pulling out all the stops for Obama, said Harley Shaiken, a University of California, Berkeley, professor and labor historian.
"What they fear with a Romney administration is broken backs," Shaiken said. "That focuses the mind."
2-3
Unions represent about 11.8 percent of U.S. workers, down from 28.3 percent in 1954 at the peak of the labor movement, and a series of high-profile defeats have left them reeling and revealed potentially troubling weaknesses.
In Wisconsin, a 16-month union campaign failed to unseat Republican Governor Scott Walker, who had pushed through sweeping curbs on collective bargaining by public employees that made him a champion of fiscal conservatives.
Walker supporters out-spent unions seven-to-one, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks money in state politics. More concerning for unions was that their vaunted ground game, the mobilization of thousands of workers for door-to-door appeals, failed spectacularly.
Also in 2012, Republicans passed a right-to-work law in Indiana, a first for an industrial heartland state.
Unions also faced an aggressive overhaul of public employee pension and retirement programs in more than a dozen states, often spearheaded by erstwhile allies.
The reforms have been popular with voters and arguably were necessary to address big deficits but represent de facto pay cuts for public workers.
Unions have aimed to stem the tide, sometimes facing opposition from Democrats as well as Republicans.
In Michigan, they have pushed a voter initiative -- opposed by Republicans -- to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the state constitution for all workers.
In Chicago, public school teachers have voted to strike the country's third-largest district for the first time in 25 years if they cannot reach agreement to end an escalating fight with Mayor Rahm Emanuel -- a Democrat and former top aide to Obama.
The presidential contest traditionally begins in earnest after Labor Day, and unions are planning for a final push. AFSCME alone has pledged to spend $100 million between now and November on get-out-the-vote efforts.
Experts say labor's return on that investment, however, is likely to be minimal.
"One candidate, Romney, is opposed to their objectives," Chaison said. "The other, Obama, is only a fair-weather friend who asks for support by saying, 'I'm better than the other guy. If he wins, it will be worse.' It's not much of a choice."
英会話学校の日本の事情。日本の民間で働く外国人英会話教師の懐具合。
****
For Japan’s English teachers, rays of hope amid the race to the bottom
by Craig Currie-Robson Jan 6, 2016 Japan Times
The major economic engines of Japan Inc. ― car manufacturers, appliance giants and the like ― have often been caught price-fixing: colluding to keep an even market share, squeeze competitors out and maintain “harmony.” Similarly, the commercial English-teaching business could be accused of wage-fixing: Rather than competing for talent, they have followed one another’s lead, driving down salaries to hamper career development, limit job mobility and keep foreign teachers firmly in their place.
We’ve all heard the tale of the scorpion and the frog. In a rising flood, the scorpion asks the frog for a piggy-back ride across the river. The frog refuses, complaining that the scorpion will sting it to death midway. The scorpion assures the frog it would do no such thing because they would both drown. The frog accepts the logic, lets the scorpion on its back and begins to swim.
Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog anyway. As they sink, the frog reminds the scorpion that now they’ll both die. The scorpion replies, “I couldn’t help it; it’s in my nature.”
The eikaiwa (English conversation school) industry’s efforts to cut pay and drive down working conditions may be leading to a similar worst-case scenario for firms and their employees. With economies improving and salaries climbing in the Anglophone countries that traditionally supply Japan’s foreign teachers, there is less incentive to make the trip to Japan, where, in many cases, wages barely pay for the cost of living and respect for employees is at best a relative concept.
This decline seems to have accelerated in recent years, and Big Eikaiwa may be nearing rock bottom. At the same time, several perennial thorny issues appear likely to come to a head over the coming year, after disputes heated up in 2015.
■All eyes are on October
The biggest change on the cards for 2016 concerns the infamous 29½-hour workweek, which has become the industry-standard method for eikaiwa chains to minimize their labor costs. Giving teachers schedules of less than 30 hours has allowed these firms to classify their teachers as part-timers, thereby avoiding enrolling them in the national shakai hoken social insurance program, under which the company is required to pay half its employees’ health insurance and pension premiums.
Yet, argues Chris Flynn of the General Union’s Fukuoka branch, “The 29½ hours was only ever an internal guideline (equal to roughly two-thirds of a full-time schedule) that the labor ministry used to clamp down on companies that didn’t enroll workers. It was never a hard and fast rule.”
In the spirit of price-fixing, most large eikaiwa chains have been bandying about this figure ― which appeared on two Social Insurance Agency internal documents ― like a get-out-of-jail-free card. Liam, a longtime ECC labor union member, says that by using this industry guideline, “the big chains funded their expansion with the money they should have paid into worker pensions.” One early victory for the ECC union, back in 2006, was winning the “option” for its members to be enrolled in the health and pension schemes, but nonenrollment remains the default for the company’s new hires.
1-4