Under pressure to improve working conditions at the crippled Fukushima plant after a series of radioactive water leaks last year, Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Naomi Hirose promised in November to double the hazard pay the utility allocates to its subcontractors for plant workers. That would have increased the amount each worker is supposed to earn to about ¥19,000 ($180) a day in hazard pay.

Only one of the more than three dozen workers interviewed by Reuters from July through September said he received the full hazard pay increase promised by Tepco. Some workers said they got nothing. In cases where pay slips detailed a hazard allowance, the amounts ranged from $36 to about $90 a day — at best half of what Hirose promised. ...

Assessing how much Fukushima workers are being paid is complicated by Tepco’s insistence that pay is a private matter for its contractors. The power utility, which runs Fukushima No. 1 and has been nationalized, sits at the top of a contracting pyramid that includes construction giants such as Taisei Corp. Tepco has declined to disclose details of any of its legal agreements with its subcontractors. ...

In a statement to Reuters, Tepco said it instructs subcontractors to ensure workers’ pay is included in all contracts and also asks companies working at the plant to submit documentation for all the subcontractors they use. The utility said it had recently begun random checks of some of the smaller contractors to determine how much of the hazard pay is reaching workers. A worker who filled in a Tepco survey told Reuters in September that one of the questions was directly related to hazard pay.