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Low morale amongst Fukushima’s cut price nuclear clean-up workers

Fukushima: Japan’s Cut-Price Nuclear Cleanup: Human Error, Plummeting Morale and Worker Exodus 福島は割引清掃 By Global Research News Global Research, November 04, 2013
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 43, No. 2, October 28, 2013.   TEPCO woes continue amid human error, plummeting morale and worker exodus By Justin McCurry and David McNeill reporting from Fukushima

During a visit to Fukushima Daiichi in September, Abe Shinzo told workers: “the future of Japan rests on your shoulders. I am counting on you.”

The prime minister’s exhortation was directed at almost 6,000 technicians and engineers, truck drivers and builders who, almost three years after the plant suffered a triple meltdown, remain on the frontline of the world’s most hazardous industrial cleanup.

Yet as the challenges facing Fukushima Daiichi become clearer with every new radiation leak and mishap, the men responsible for cleaning up the plant are suffering from plummeting morale, health problems and deep anxiety about the future. Even now, at the start of a decommissioning operation that is expected to last four decades, the plant faces a shortage of workers qualified to manage the dangerous work that lies ahead, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the situation inside the facility.

The dangers faced by the nearly 900 employees of Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] and some 5,000 workers hired by a network of contractors and sub-contractors were underlined in October when six men were doused with contaminated water at a desalination facility. 　Their brush with danger was a sign that the cleanup is entering its most precarious stage since the March 2011 meltdown.

Commenting on the latest leak, the head of Japan’s nuclear regulator Tanaka Shunichi, told reporters: “Mistakes are often linked to morale. People usually don’t make silly, careless mistakes when they’re　motivated and working in a positive environment. The lack of it, I think, may be related to the recent problems.” The radiation spill was the latest in a string of serious water and radiation leaks that have raised questions about the state of mind of the workforce, and Tepco’s ability to continue the cleanup alone. According to sources with inside knowledge of the plant, the slew of bad news is sapping morale and causing anxiety, as the public and international community raise pressure on Japan to show demonstrable progress in cleaning up the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl…..

For the thousands of non-Tepco employees hired across Japan to perform backbreaking work for subcontractors, the lure of earning decent money in return for working close to lethal levels of radiation has proved an illusion. Once money for accommodation has been subtracted, laborers are typically left with a few thousand yen at the end of each day. In some cases, employers withhold danger money, which can amount to more than half of a worker’s daily wage, because, they say, they need the cash to keep the company in business.

“The real work at Fukushima Daiichi s being done by the general contractors, with the smaller companies picking up the crumbs,” Yoshikawa said. “They outbid each other for contracts and so end up with less money to pay workers. They have no choice but to hire cheap labor.http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-japans-cut-price-nuclear-cleanup/5356796

November 7, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | employment, Fukushima 2013, Japan