Lured to work with radiationHiroko Tabuchi
SNIP
Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he is not even an employee of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the crippled plant. He is one of thousands of untrained, itinerant, temporary labourers who handle the bulk of the dangerous work at nuclear power plants here and in other countries, lured by the higher wages offered for working with radiation. Collectively, these contractors were exposed to levels of radiation about 16 times as high as the levels faced by Tokyo Electric employees last year, according to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which regulates the industry. These workers remain vital to efforts to contain the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plants.
They are emblematic of Japan's two-tiered work force, with an elite class of highly paid employees at top companies and a subclass of labourers who work for less pay, have less job security and receive fewer benefits. Such labour practices have both endangered the health of these workers and undermined safety at Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, critics charge.
‘Dangerous for them and safety'
“This is the hidden world of nuclear power,” said Yuko Fujita, a former physics professor at Keio University in Tokyo and a long-time campaigner for improved labour conditions in the nuclear industry. “Wherever there are hazardous conditions, these labourers are told to go. It is dangerous for them, and it is dangerous for nuclear safety.”
Of roughly 83,000 workers at Japan's 18 commercial nuclear power plants, 88 per cent were contract workers in the year that ended in March 2010, the nuclear agency said. At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 89 per cent of the 10,303 workers during that period were contractors. In Japan's nuclear industry, the elite are operators like Tokyo Electric and the manufacturers that build and help maintain the plants like Toshiba and Hitachi. But under those companies are contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors — with wages, benefits and protection against radiation dwindling with each step down the ladder.
http://www.hindu.com/2011/04/11/stories/2011041156371100.htm 
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