Nuclear cleanup workers being recruited from society's lowest rungs (JAPAN)

[AsahinaKimi]

TOKYO —

On March 17, a week after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami that struck the Tohoku region, a notice was posted at a worker recruitment center in Airin, the rundown neighborhood of Osaka’s Nishinari Ward where thousands of impoverished day laborers congregate in search of construction and other blue-collar jobs.

As reported in Asahi Geino (May 26), the ad read, “Wanted: drivers for 10-ton trucks in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture. Pay: 12,000/day.($146.95)”

But two workers who signed up for the jobs instead found themselves dispatched to work at the damaged nuclear complex in Fukushima Prefecture.

The men first met up with a labor subcontractor in Gifu Prefecture, which ordered them to Fukushima, where they were requested to drive water tankers as part of the effort to cool down the damaged reactors Nos. 5 and 6, for twice the initially offered remuneration. The recruitment center in Osaka first learned of the bait-and-switch when one of the two men telephoned while on route.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi-shukan-post/view/nuclear-cleanup-workers-being-recruited-from-societys-lowest-rungs