Most Workers at Japanese Nuclear Plants are Contract Laborers

[The Straight Story]

Most Workers at Japanese Nuclear Plants are Contract Laborers


More than 80,000 workers operate Japan’s 18 nuclear power plants, but nearly 90% of them are not employees. Those manning the complex, potentially dangerous facilities are contractors who receive varying levels of pay and benefits, depending on what tier of hired help they represent (contractor, subcontractor or sub-subcontractor).

At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 89% of the 10,303 workers there last year were contract laborers. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which regulates the industry, says these contractors were exposed to levels of radiation about 16 times as high as the levels faced by Tokyo Electric employees in 2010.

These workers have been critical players at the Fukushima nuclear plant, performing tasks that have possibly exposed them to lethal doses of radiation. These include struggling against extreme heat while cleaning off radiation from the reactors’ drywells and spent-fuel pools using mops and rags and toiling in the cold to fill drums with contaminated waste.

According to The New York Times, since the mid-1970s, about 50 nuclear workers in Japan have received compensation for cancer. The two workers who stepped in radioactive water two weeks ago were subcontract employees.

http://www.allgov.com/US_and_the_World/ViewNews/Most_Workers_at_Japanese_Nuclear_Plants_are_Contract_Laborers_110414

[Octafish]

1. Little People

In addition to paying taxes, they were born to clean spent fuel pools by hand.

[Urban Prairie]

2. Corporate profits supercedes employees' and consumers' health and safety

As well as the environment and ecology of the entire planet.

That has been demonstrated quite vividly, especially since the turn of the century, despite teabaggers/rightwingers praise and worship of "free market" global corporate capitalism and their desire to completely deregulate and privatize everything except the three branches of local, state, and federal government and the military.