Fukushima Blows Lid Off Exploited Labour

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104978

By Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 3, 2011 (IPS) - The Fukushima disaster has thrown up the first opportunity in decades to bring justice to thousands of unskilled workers who risk radioactive contamination to keep Japan’s nuclear power plants running.

"Fukushima has created public awareness on a section of nuclear workers castigated as ‘radiation- exposed people’ but forming the dark underbelly of an industry that depends on them," says Minoru Nasu, spokesperson for the Japan Day Labourers Union.

Nasu, a long-time labour activist, says that while nuclear industry relies heavily on unskilled workers it has left it to thuggish subcontractors to marshal them as daily wagers.

The common practice for the past several decades can best be described as "human auctioning," Nasu told IPS. Labourers gather at the crack of dawn at designated places such as public parks to be picked up by toughs who take them to the nuclear plants. snip

"When their work is completed, they are expected to simply disappear...