Japan Press Weekly

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2021 December 1 - 7 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

20 foreign trainees crammed into a room, forced to pay 30K yen/mth rent each

A National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren) official, who is in charge of the Zenroren social media consultation service for foreign technical intern trainees, visited the Justice Ministry and the Labor Ministry on November 30 and demanded that the national government issue instructions to related supervising organizations to protect foreign trainees from unfair treatment and reported on a sharp increase in the number of messages from foreign trainees seeking help under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kurematsu Saichi, the head of the service, said, "We received 70 complaints from foreign trainees over the past year: In 20 cases, trainees-receiving organizations did not pay trainees' airfare; in 12 cases, deposits were additionally collected from trainees."

Kurematsu emphasized the need to make improvements to the Industrial Trainee and Technical Internship program, referring to the following cases:

As the average rent for one room is around 60,000 yen in the area, three trainees were charged 20,000-yen rent per person for a small prefab hut; 20 internship workers were crammed into a large room with bunk beds and were forced to pay 30,000 yen each as boarding fees; some Vietnamese trainees before coming to Japan were forced to make exorbitant deposits and yet more deposits were collected during the internship program period; trainees-receiving organizations are supposed to cover all travel costs when trainees return to their countries but some Vietnamese trainees were forced to pay soaring airfare costs due to the coronavirus crisis; and a trainee who could not understand Japanese was dismissed after refusing to work on a job involving asbestos-containing materials because the safety instructions were given only in Japanese.

Past related article:
> JCP Fujino urges gov’t to improve safeguard measure for Vietnamese trainees [March 21, 2021]