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Down and out in Fukushima

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Down and out in Fukushima FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE: A 9.0 earthquake and 15-meter high tsunami waves on March 11, 2011 triggered multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. REUTERS/ISSEI KATO Jobs at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant offer low pay, high risks of radiation. And your boss could be a member of the yakuza. Down and out in Fukushima BY ANTONI SLODKOWSKI AND MARI SAITO IWAKI, JAPAN, OCTOBER 25, 2013 SPECIAL REPORT 1 NUCLEAR WORKERS DOWN AND OUT IN FUKUSHIMA etsuya Hayashi went to Fukushima to take a job at ground zero of Tthe worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. He lasted less than two weeks. Hayashi, 41, says he was recruited for a job monitoring the radiation exposure of workers leaving the plant in the summer of 2012. Instead, when he turned up for work, he was handed off through a web of con- tractors and assigned, to his surprise, to one of Fukushima’s hottest radiation zones. He was told he would have to wear an oxygen tank and a double-layer protective suit. Even then, his handlers told him, the radiation would be so high it could burn through his annual exposure limit in just under an hour. “I felt cheated and entrapped,” Hayashi said. “I had not agreed to any of this.” UNHAPPY SURPRISE: Tetsuya Hayashi didn’t realize he’d be assigned to one of Fukushima’s highest When Hayashi took his grievances radiation zones. His Tepco ID card (below) is pictured atop a copy of his resume, which he says his to a firm on the next rung up the ladder employer forged. REUTERS/TORU HANAI of Fukushima contractors, he says he was fired. He filed a complaint but has not re- ceived any response from labour regulators I felt cheated and for more than a year. All the eight compa- entrapped. I had not agreed to nies involved, including embattled plant any of this. operator Tokyo Electric Power Co, de- clined to comment or could not be reached Tetsuya Hayashi for comment on his case. Out of work, Hayashi found a second job at Fukushima, this time building a con- crete base for tanks to hold spent fuel rods. His new employer skimmed almost a third of his wages – about $1,500 a month – and dependence on a sprawling and little scru- Obayashi, Shimizu Corp and Taisei Corp paid him the rest in cash in brown paper tinised network of subcontractors – many – oversee hundreds of small firms work- envelopes, he says. Reuters reviewed docu- of them inexperienced with nuclear work ing on government-funded contracts to ments related to Hayashi’s complaint, in- and some of them, police say, have ties to remove radioactive dirt and debris from cluding pay envelopes and bank statements. organised crime. nearby villages and farms so evacuees can Hayashi’s hard times are not unusual in Tepco sits atop a pyramid of subcontrac- return home. the estimated $150-billion effort to dis- tors that can run to seven or more layers and Tokyo Electric, widely known as Tepco, mantle the Fukushima reactors and clean includes construction giants such as Kajima says it has been unable to monitor subcon- up the neighbouring areas, a Reuters ex- Corp and Obayashi Corp in the first tier. tractors fully but has taken steps to limit amination found. The embattled utility remains in charge worker abuses and curb the involvement of In reviewing Fukushima working con- of the work to dismantle the damaged organised crime. ditions, Reuters interviewed more than Fukushima reactors, a government-subsi- “We sign contracts with companies 80 workers, employers and officials in- dized job expected to take 30 years or more. based on the cost needed to carry out a volved in the unprecedented nuclear clean- Outside the plant, Japan’s “Big Four” task,” Masayuki Ono, a general manager up. A common complaint: the project’s construction companies – Kajima, for nuclear power at Tepco, told Reuters. SPECIAL REPORT 2 NUCLEAR WORKERS DOWN AND OUT IN FUKUSHIMA DECONTAMINATION: Thousands of workers are picking up radioactive debris in towns and villages around Fukushima prefecture and storing them in huge blue bags, which for now are piling up along roadsides. REUTERS/SOPHIE KNIGHT “The companies then hire their own em- It’s very difficult for us to go then transferred to more than 1,000 tanks, ployees taking into account our contract. enough to fill more than 130 Olympic- It’s very difficult for us to go in and check in and check their contracts. sized swimming pools. their contracts.” Masayuki Ono Dismantling the Fukushima Daiichi The unprecedented Fukushima nuclear general manager for nuclear power, Tepco plant will require maintaining a job pool of clean-up both inside and outside the plant at least 12,000 workers just through 2015, faces a deepening shortage of workers. Tepco, Asia’s largest listed power utility, according to Tepco’s blueprint. That com- There are about 25 percent more openings had long enjoyed close ties to regulators pares to just over 8,000 registered workers than applicants for jobs in Fukushima pre- and lax government oversight. That came now. In recent months, some 6,000 have fecture, according to government data. under harsh scrutiny after a 9.0 magnitude been working inside the plant. Raising wages could draw more work- earthquake and a massive tsunami hit the The Tepco hiring estimate does not in- ers but that has not happened, the data plant on March 11, 2011. The disaster trig- clude the manpower required for the gov- shows. Tepco is under pressure to post a gered three reactor meltdowns, a series of ernment’s new $330 million plan to build profit in the year to March 2014 under a explosions and a radiation leak that forced a massive ice wall around the plant to keep turnaround plan Japan’s top banks recently 150,000 people to flee nearby villages. radiated water from leaking into the sea. financed with $5.9 billion in new loans and Tepco’s hapless efforts since to stabi- “I think we should really ask whether refinancing. In 2011, in the wake of the di- lise the situation have been like some- they are able to do this while ensuring saster, Tepco cut pay for its own workers by one playing “whack-a-mole”, Minister of the safety of the workers,” said Shinichi 20 percent. Economy, Trade and Industry Toshimitsu Nakayama, deputy director of safety re- With wages flat and workers scarce, la- Motegi has said. search at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. bour brokers have stepped into the gap, re- Japan’s nuclear industry has relied on ‘NUCLEAR GYPSIES’ cruiting people whose lives have reached a cheap labour since the first plants, includ- dead end or who have trouble finding a job Hayashi is one of an estimated 50,000 ing Fukushima, opened in the 1970s. For outside the disaster zone. workers who have been hired so far to years, the industry has rounded up itiner- The result has been a proliferation of shut down the nuclear plant and decon- ant workers known as “nuclear gypsies” small firms – many unregistered. Some 800 taminate the towns and villages nearby. from the Sanya neighbourhood of Tokyo companies are active inside the Fukushima Thousands more will have to follow. Some and Kamagasaki in Osaka, areas known for plant and hundreds more are working in of the workers will be needed to maintain large numbers of homeless men. the decontamination effort outside its the system that cools damaged fuel rods in “Working conditions in the nuclear in- gates, according to Tepco and documents the reactors with thousands of tonnes of dustry have always been bad,” said Saburo reviewed by Reuters. water every day. The contaminated runoff is Murata, deputy director of Osaka’s Hannan SPECIAL REPORT 3 NUCLEAR WORKERS DOWN AND OUT IN FUKUSHIMA Chuo Hospital. “Problems with money, outsourced recruitment, lack of proper TETSUYA HAYASHI health insurance – these have existed for decades.” The Fukushima project has magnified I felt cheated and entrapped those problems. When Japan’s parliament approved a bill to fund decontamination I went to work in the Fukushima Daiichi When I received my nuclear worker’s work in August 2011, the law did not apply nuclear power plant in June last year. passbook after my stint, it said that I existing rules regulating the construction I was recruited to work as a surveyor used to be an employee of Suzushi and industry. As a result, contractors working checking radiation exposure of workers ABL Co. Ltd. But I had never signed on decontamination have not been required leaving the plant. When I arrived in Iwaki, any contract with either of the two to disclose information on management or a town close to the crippled nuclear companies. I suspect they forged my undergo any screening. plant, I was picked up by RH Kogyo, a handbook to hide the fact that they That meant anyone could become a contractor I had never heard of before. outsourced my employment to smaller nuclear contractor overnight. Many small It was one of the many firms firms. companies without experience rushed to that handled me inside the plant. In I went back and confronted my bid for contracts and then often turned to one of the first meetings, a mid-tier former employers about everything. They brokers to round up the manpower, accord- subcontractor, Suzushi Kogyo, asked took me to Suzushi’s office and yelled me to write on my application that I had at me. They also called my mother to three years of experience working for a tell her that I was in trouble.
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