Subcontracted Death
April 3, 2011
I hesitated to publish this information, relayed by a reader in the form of a translation of an article from the Spanish daily "El Correo." But it has now been confirmed, plunging us into the depths of horror. Yet, how can we be surprised? Isn't this consistent with the way our world currently functions? In Japan, men sacrifice themselves to try to contain a disaster caused by corporate incompetence, recklessness, and greed, while our dwarf-president reaffirmed, twenty days after the catastrophe, before Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan that nuclear energy remains the only solution—provided we establish international safety standards.
Let's see...
Yet solutions do exist. For example, solar power combined with high-capacity offshore installations. A topic I explore in an article set to appear in the May issue of the Nexus magazine.
Here is what emerges from these mind-boggling working conditions.
http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/les-bagnards-du-nucleaire_974084.html
Source: http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/environnement/japon-les-clochards-du-nucleaire_978891.html
Japan: The Homeless of Nuclear Power
By Mathieu Gaulène, published on 02/04/2011
Although power plants have their own employees, about 80% of Japan's nuclear workers are actually subcontractors.
80% of Japan's nuclear workers are subcontractors, recruited from the most impoverished segments of Japanese society. An investigation into the "gypsies of nuclear power."
In addition to high levels of radioactivity that condemn them to death in the short term, the roughly 500 Fukushima cleanup workers must labor under horrific and inhumane conditions. They receive only two meals a day—biscuits in the morning, rice in the evening—a maximum of one and a half liters of water per person, and sleep on lead mats directly on the ground. Under these conditions, a supervisor confided to the Asahi newspaper that he no longer believed he could find other employees willing to go there. In the Tokyo newspaper Tokyo Shimbun, a former subcontracted worker from Fukushima Daiichi openly expresses anger toward the three workers whose legs were contaminated. Of the three irradiated workers, two weren't even wearing boots. Who are these nuclear workers, and how are they recruited?
Although power plants have their own employees, about 80% of Japan's nuclear workers are actually subcontractors, recruited from the most impoverished segments of Japanese society. These poor, unskilled workers perform the most dangerous tasks deep inside nuclear power plants for just a few days, sometimes a few weeks. Because they move from plant to plant, they are known in Japan as the "gypsies of nuclear power" (genpatsu jipushi), a name derived from a 1984 book by Kunio Horie.
The rem is an acronym for "Röntgen Equivalent Man," an older unit for measuring radiation absorbed by a living organism. It has since been replaced by the sievert (1 rem equals 0.01 sievert).
In France, where subcontracting in the nuclear sector is rapidly expanding, the term used in EDF employees' jargon to describe them is less poetic but more explicit: "meat for rems." Following the Toyota model, Japanese companies have long relied on subcontracting, especially in construction. And the intermediaries responsible for hiring daily workers are often yakuza.
On the Japanese ANPE website "Hello Work," such job postings are easily found—for example, one offering work at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini power plants for three months, from February 3 to April 30, 2011.
The job description is brief: inspection, electrical, and welding tasks. "No diploma, qualifications, or experience required," it states. Hiring is done under the name of a small subcontracting company specializing in nuclear power plant maintenance. The pay: 10,000 yen per day, or 83 euros.
A 2003 report by El Mundo revealed that Fukushima Daiichi even recruited homeless people from parks in Tokyo. Since the recession at the beginning of the 1990s, parks in major cities have turned into real encampments, with numerous makeshift shelters made of blue tarps.
It is here that subcontracting companies—often controlled by yakuza—send recruiters to find daily workers. In the case of Fukushima Daiichi, these poor workers were told they were being hired as "cleaners." Then, after being transported 200 km from Tokyo, they realized at the last moment that they were to work deep inside a nuclear reactor.
In France
The "Convicts of Nuclear Power"
Since then, warning signs have been posted in Tokyo parks: "Don't take this job—it will kill you!" But over the past thirty years, thousands of poor workers, immigrant laborers, and homeless people have taken turns working in these plants, risking their lives. Some attempt to have their radiation-related illnesses recognized. The Shimahashi family was the first to win a lawsuit for occupational illness: their son Nobuki died at age 29 from leukemia after eight years working at the Hamaoka nuclear plant.
This case might be just the tip of the iceberg: according to a report by Dr. Fujita, professor of physics at Keiô University, between 700 and 1,000 "nuclear gypsies" have already died, and thousands more have developed cancer. Under these conditions, the so-called "voluntary" Fukushima cleanup workers, whose courage is so often highlighted, might well be unwilling "heroes" of the nuclear disaster.
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