"裁判所も「技能実習生制度」に警告発す！〜ベトナム人除染労働事件で和解", 29 Oct 2020

[Japanese-to-English translation provided by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.]

In 2015, Vietnamese trainees arrived in Fukushima prefecture to learn concrete and molding construction. However, they found themselves tasked with a completely unrelated job: contamination cleanup. Without any safety training, the interns were forced to take on nuclear waste cleanup. Three workers in their twenties and thirties went to Zentouitsu Workers Union to raise their concerns. After joining the union, the interns filed a lawsuit in the Fukushima District Court against their employer, the construction company Hiwada, in September 2019. As part of the lawsuit they asked the employer to pay 12.47 million yen [approx. 119,000 USD] in compensation for their work…In 23 October 2020, the interns’ legal representatives and the company reached an agreement…

...As part of the agreement, the company would pay a total of 1.71 million yen [approx. 16,000 USD] to the trainees. The court also noted in the settlement documents that “contamination cleanup is not one of the main objectives of the foreign trainee program. The foreign trainee program must be implemented in accordance with its main objectives”…The lawyers representing the interns said that “it was unusual for the courts to provide such a statement in the settlement documents. They praised the court, saying “the court’s intervention in this case is as important as a court ruling”…