Eight major companies including Toyota Motor Corp. have started a joint project to support foreign workers in Japan.

Officials said the project will provide counseling services to non-Japanese citizens working at the participating companies or their business partners on the difficulties they face at their workplaces, such as rights violations.

These services will help give the companies and workers a grasp of the reality and seek solutions.

There has been no end to allegations that many foreigners are being forced to work under wretched conditions, and the issue has been raised internationally. The situation should be promptly rectified.

Technical intern trainees, who don’t have the freedom to switch their workplaces, are facing particularly tough circumstances.

An out-of-court settlement was reached recently in a case wherein a male Vietnamese technical intern who worked for a construction company in Okayama, the capital of Okayama Prefecture, complained that he had been physically abused by his colleagues.

Both the construction company and a supervising organization, which arranged for his placement with the company, apologized and paid him settlement money. 

The man enlisted the help of a labor union based in Fukuyama, a city in neighboring Hiroshima Prefecture.

The union obtained a video showing how he was physically abused and presented the recording as proof of the misconduct during its collective bargaining with the company. The labor union also brought the inhumane practice to the attention of the public.

Technical intern trainees have been harmed physically and mentally by a succession of irregularities, such as violations of safety standards, illegal overtime, unpaid wages and abuses of authority.

Labor unions have helped rescue some of them in other cases as well. They should work with local governments, bar associations and employers alarmed about the current situation to step up their efforts.

The Organization for Technical Intern Training (OTIT), an authorized corporation founded five years ago, is tasked with supervising, and giving guidance to, training program implementers and other parties. Still, more than 5,700 violations of labor standard laws and regulations were recognized in 2020 alone.

There have also been frequent reports of cases, like the one in Okayama, wherein a supervising organization, which is supposed to provide assistance to technical interns in matters of their lives and livelihoods, has failed to fulfill its role. Many supervising organizations have seen their licenses rescinded.

The OTIT itself has not been spared from criticism.

It was learned recently that an official with the OTIT Sendai Office emailed a trio of female Vietnamese technical interns to call on them to secede from a local labor union that they had joined. Labor minister Shigeyuki Goto last month expressed regret over the matter in the Diet.

Training program implementers, supervising organizations and the OTIT are all facing the question of whether they understand that they are tasked with giving just treatment to foreign workers, who are essential supporters of society, and defend their livelihoods and human rights.

The Asahi Shimbun has called for, in its editorials, prompt abolition of the technical intern training program, which is serving as a means for securing access to cheap labor despite the program’s stated goal of having foreigners acquire professional skills in Japan and take them back to their home countries.

A “specified skilled worker” program was introduced in 2019 to allow foreign workers who fall under the corresponding category to change jobs and, under certain conditions, also bring their families to Japan.

There were, however, only about 64,000 specified skilled workers in Japan as of March, less than one-quarter the number of technical intern trainees in the country. And those who are working under the new framework have been voicing the same old complaints about their workplace environments and the way they are treated.

A study group was set up under the justice minister early this year to discuss the pair of frameworks--the technical intern trainee program and the specified skilled worker program--and study what they should be like in the future.

Political leaders should recognize this as a pressing matter and responsibly end the abnormal situation we are facing.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 30