When a young Vietnamese woman found out late last year that she was pregnant after arriving in Japan on a “technical trainee” visa, she was given a stark choice: “Have an abortion or go back to Vietnam.”
However, returning home would leave her unable to pay back the US$10,000 she borrowed to pay recruiters there.
“She needs to stay to pay back her debts,” said Shiro Sasaki, secretary-general of the Zentoitsu (All United) Workers Union, who has advocated on her behalf and said such threats were common.
Buoyed by hopes of higher wages, but burdened by loans, young Vietnamese — the fastest-growing group of foreign workers in Japan — will be among those most affected by a new scheme to let in more blue-collar workers that starts next month.
“Trainees from China have been declining as wages there rise with economic growth, while in Vietnam unemployment is high for youth with high education levels, so many young people want to go abroad to work,” said Futaba Ishizuka, a research fellow at the think tank Institute of Developing Economies.
The technical trainee program is widely known as a back door for blue-collar labor in immigration-shy Japan.
Reported abuses in Japan include low and unpaid wages, excessive hours, violence and sexual harassment.
In Vietnam, unscrupulous recruiters and brokers often charge trainees exorbitant fees.
Such problems would persist and could worsen under the new system, aimed at easing a historic labor shortage, according to interviews with activists, academics, unionists and trainees.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose conservative base fears a rise in crime and a threat to the nation’s social fabric, has insisted that the new law, enacted in December last year, does not constitute an “immigration policy.”
That worries its critics.
“In fact, Japan is already a country of immigrants, but because they say it is not an ‘immigration policy’ and the premise is that people will not stay, they only take temporary steps,” Japan Civil Liberties Union director Akira Hatate said.
“The needs of society are not met and the needs of the workers are not met,” Hatate said.
The trainee system began in 1993 with the aim of transferring skills to workers from developing nations, but persistent abuses developed early on, experts said.
Those issues were spotlighted last year during debate over the new law.
Among the high-profile cases was that of four companies using trainees for decontamination work in areas affected by radiation after the March 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster.
Two firms, also accused of not paying appropriate wages, were banned from employing trainees for five years; the others got warnings from the Japanese Ministry of Justice.
A survey by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare published in June last year showed that more than 70 percent of trainee employers had breached labor rules, with excessive hours and safety problems the most common.
That compared with 66 percent for employers overall.
The Organization for Technical Intern Training, a watchdog group, was set up in 2017.
This month, it issued a reminder to employers that trainees are covered by Japanese labor law. It specifically banned unfair treatment of pregnant workers.
Harsh conditions led more than 7,000 trainees to quit in 2017, experts said, many lured by shady brokers promising fake documentation and higher-paying jobs.
Almost half were from Vietnam.
Because trainees are not permitted to switch employers, leaving their jobs usually means losing legal visa status. A few go to shelters run by non-profit groups or get help from unionists; many disappear into a labor black market.
“The situation is completely different from what they were told back home,” said Shigeru Yamashita, managing director of the Vietnam Mutual Aid Association in Japan. “They have debts they cannot repay with their salaries at home, so the only option is to flee into the black market for labor.”
The new law would allow about 345,000 blue-collar workers to enter Japan over five years in 14 sectors such as construction and nursing care, which face acute labor shortages. One category of “specified skilled workers” can stay up to five years, but cannot bring their family.
A second category of visas — currently limited to the construction and shipbuilding industries — allows workers to bring their family and be eligible to stay longer.
Nguyen Thi Thuy Phuong, 29, left her husband and young child back home in Vietnam to work as a trainee in a knitwear factory in Mitsuke City in northern Japan.
The textile industry was not included in the new visa program after coming under fire for the high number of labor law breaches in its trainee programs.
Now she wishes she could bring her family and stay longer than three years.
“Life in Japan is convenient and the air is clean,” she said in careful Japanese during a break from work.
For-profit employment agencies and individuals can register as liaisons between recruiters and employers. These “registered support organizations” do not need licenses.
Immigration authorities are to provide oversight of the new foreign workers; the labor ministry’s immigration bureau is to become an agency on April 1, a bureaucratic distinction that gives it more clout.
On Friday last week, the justice ministry issued fresh rules for the new system, including a requirement that foreign workers be paid at least as much as Japanese employees.
However, Sasaki said that the agency’s focus would be residence status, not labor conditions.
Some companies have woken up to the risk of losing investors if they or their suppliers breach workers’ rights, Hatate said.
However, the rush to implement the new law has left local authorities worried that too little has been done to support and integrate more foreigners.
“If there is not a proper framework to accept them and they are thought of as purely a way to fill the labor shortage, for certain there will be major problems,” Kanagawa Prefecture Governor Yuji Kuroiwa said.
Takashi Takayama, whose Vietnamese name is Cao Son Quy, fled Vietnam as a refugee in 1979. He recalled how foreigners were laid off in droves after the 2008 global financial crisis and fears a similar scenario when demand for labor eases after next year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
“When the Olympics are over, I think a tragic event will occur,” Takayama said at a Vietnamese New Year celebration at a Catholic church outside Tokyo. “I don’t want to see that.”
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