Foreign trainees in Japan face exploitation

KAIZU, Japan (AP) — When Chinese textile worker Wang Mingzhi heard he could more than triple his income with a three-year stint working in Japan as an apprentice, he eagerly paid a broker $7,300 in fees and deposit money.

From afar, Japan seemed a model of prosperity and order. Japanese government backing of the training program he would enter the country under helped ease worries about going abroad. But when he joined the ranks of 150,000 other interns from poor Asian countries working in Japan, Wang was in for a series of shocks.

Promised a clothing factory job, the 25-year-old wound up at a huge warehouse surrounded by rice paddies where he was told to fill boxes with clothing, toys and other goods. Wang and other new arrivals weren’t given contracts by their Japanese boss and monthly wages were withheld, except for overtime.

Anyone who didn’t like the conditions could return to China, their boss told them. But then Wang would have lost most of his deposit. And how could he face his family, who were counting on sharing in the $40,000 he hoped he would earn for three years work.

“We didn’t have any choice but to stay,” Wang said from his bunk in a cramped house he shared with a dozen others in Kaizu, a small city in central Gifu prefecture.

Wang’s story is not unusual. Faced with a shrinking workforce and tight restrictions on immigration, Japanese employers such as small companies, farms and fisheries are plugging labor shortages by relying on interns from China, Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia.

The training program is intended to help developing countries by upgrading the technical expertise of their workers but critics say it is abused by some employers who see it as a source of cheap labor.

Employers committing violations such as failing to pay wages numbered 197 last year, down more than half from 452 in 2008, according to Japanese officials.