JCP calls for measures to provide foreign workers with better working conditions

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

JCP calls for measures to provide foreign workers with better working conditions

Japanese Communist Party representative Shiokawa Tetsuya at the February 25 House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting urged the government to take measures to ease hardships that foreign workers and their families are experiencing in connection with mass layoffs of temporary workers by major manufacturers.

There are more than 300,000 Japanese-Brazilians currently living in Japan. In Shizuoka's Hamamatsu City, hosting many manufacturing plants, nearly 80 percent of foreign workers are working as temporary workers or independent contractors, and 40 percent of them are living in their company-owned or ?contracted housing complex.

Warning that many foreign workers in Japan have become "working poor" and homeless because manufacturers tend to dismiss them first before anybody else, Shiokawa demanded that the government immediately look into their living and employment conditions.

Labor Minister Masuzoe Yoichi said that at least 5,600 foreign workers are expected to lose their jobs by the end of this fiscal year, adding that the ministry will continue its research in order to grasp the whole picture of their situation.

In 1989, Japan revised its Immigration Control Law in order to give foreigners of Japanese ancestry residential status which also allows them to work in Japan.

Showing the Justice Ministry's finding in the same year that many job opportunities available for foreign workers in Japan are independent contract work provided by manufacturers, Shiokawa criticized the government for revising the Immigration Control Law to meet major companies' request for allowing more foreigners to work in Japan.

- Akahata, February 27, 2009