Unbearable hours, threats of being fired: The abuse of migrant interns in Japan
observers.france24.comI saw this kind of behavior when I worked for a Korean company here in the US.
They treated us like animals. I thought I had seen the worst working conditions possible during my time in Haiti.
But the two years I spent working for the Koreans showed me that I lacked a great deal of perspective regarding just how poorly employees can be treated.
And they treated their visiting interns even worse. Students would fly in from Korea and rotate in/out every six months. Those kids were put through the wringer.
One of my good friends is South Korean. When he worked for Samsung in Seoul as an engineer over a decade ago, he was forced to live in Samsung dormitories which were overseen by their managers. Apparently, it was a shock even for him to realize that he had to ask his manager just to go out on a date. If I remember correctly, he even had to give details of his female date to his manager. (It may or may not be official policy, but what are you going to do when they ask and you need permission to leave?)
Knowing what life was like here since he went to undergrad here, it was an easy choice for him to come back to the US.
Lots of Koreans move to Vietnam and Thailand for that reason. The pay is low in SK and the work culture horrid, so if your choice is earning $30-50k in Seoul or $20-40k in BKK or Saigon, plenty of people choose the latter.
And tbh, Korean work culture seems to be horrible for overall productivity. Disclaimer: my only second hand knowledge are a Norwegian oil rig engineer and a French sailor (working on oil rigs. Weird, I know, one is extended family, second is happenstance).
But from what I've heard, they have trouble adapting to new data (they _can_ do it in real emergency, but actively avoid taking initiative), hide issues and overall are very rigid and show almost no improvisation skills, all of which is a problem in high stress, fast-changing environment like oil rigs.
Whenever Korean factories opened in Poland, that was the same conclusion. Workers were treated like shit.
Sadly, it's a common issue with recently developed country work culture.
For example, TSMC is facing similar hurdles trying to expand semicon manufacturing in the US [0].
Even though SK, JP, TW, and Israel are all developed countries now, the developing country mentality still persists because their transition was relatively recent (a generation or less ago), and a lot of labor management and regulations is stuck in the old school era.
At least in the EU, the recently developed (eg. Czechia) and developing countries (eg. Bulgaria) still have some labor frameworks to kinda follow and some kind of recourse - at least for white collar work.
Czechia is recently developed? :DDDD
If Spain is a developed country with a median wage around $1600/mo and an HDI of 0.905, then Czechia with a median wage of $1400/mo and an HDI of 0.895 is one.
Could be they have problem with the word "recently".
Czech lands were pretty developed (relatively speaking) for many centuries, e. g. T the first German speaking university was established in Prague. Then the communist era spoiled it, World Bank recognized Czechia as "developed" 9nly in 2006.
The World Bank classification is for High-Income, not developed. Even Russia, Mexico, and Turkey all caught up to that definition at various points in time before regressing. Even China's GDP per Capita is closeish to that level yet median household incomes and HDI are still lower than Thailand and Serbia.
Czechia didn't catch up to Western Europe HDIs until the mid-2010s, and Median wages were significantly lower than much of Western Europe until recently (eg. The datapoint above), and GDP per Capita is still significantly behind much of Western Europe and the Asian Tigers.
Even South Korea didn't officially become developed until the mid-2010s, and they outpaced Czechia in HDI and GDP per Capita by the early 2000s.
Alternatively, if Czechia was a developed country in the mid-2000s, then Turkey and Hungary are now developed countries in the early 2020s as they have hit similar indicators as Czechia in the 2000s.
> Czech lands were pretty developed
Developed versus developing is a technical-ish term.
Czechia was absolutely a developing country until recently. Just having a medieval university or some industrial capacity in the early 20th isn't saying much, as Korea and Taiwan were in a similar boat as well under the otherwise brutal Japanese colonial rule.
And even today, water treatment in Czechia lags significantly behind much of the Western EU member states.
Saying otherwise is just Eurocentricism.
And it also ignores that fact that for most of it's history, it was CzechoSLOVAKIA and Slovakia is still lagging behind on developmental indicators to this day, despite having a similar linguistic and ethnic proximity to Czechs as Serbs are to Croats.
"some industrial capacity in the early 20th isn't saying much"
Quite a lot of industrial capacity since the early 19th. Czech Lands had a lot of black coal and water, so heavy industry started flourishing early, once steam engines were available. The first industrial ironworks in Ostrava started producing steel in 1828; the heavy ingots back then had to be transported by horses, because first railway only reached the region a decade later.
" for most of it's history, it was CzechoSLOVAKIA"
Nope, bad history. Czechoslovakia was a relatively short-lived country, only extant for three generations. The Slovaks spent almost a millennium, from approximately 1000 to 1918, as a Hungarian de-facto colony, Felvidék (the Upper Land); subject of a different kingdom. The Czech crown lands never extended to Slovakia. The only unitary state was the 20th century republic.
These types of companies are fleeing to the Southern US because the conservative governments here offer no protections for the employees.
I remember a Korean car factory in Alabama got caught using child labor a couple years back: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi...
My line supplied that plant. It's about 45 minutes down the road from where I worked. And the Alabama legislature is now making it easier for companies to hire child laborers. We're going to start seeing a lot more injuries in manufacturing and food processing. We are regressing.
What specifically did they do? I can say that I've been treated very badly by Private Equity and other employers myself, but it's easy to lack perspective and I don't really feel like trying to enter a victim contest. Hopefully I've learned enough to avoid that kind of employment in future.
In IB/PE we have exit opps like VC or PM, and there is a reckoning in IB/PE leadership that the old school 60-100 hour analyst work culture is toxic.
In Korean companies, the work culture is still stuck in the 90s era IB mentality, as a lot of management are much older and started their careers when chauvanism, racism, functional alcoholism, power politics, overwork, etc was still the norm.
Tbf, SK was still a developing country until 10-15ish years ago.
I didn't realize that South Korean was so behind the times until I read "Human Acts" by Han Kang. That book led me to perform quite a bit of research and further reading on Korea.
The US has plenty of issues, but a lot of Americans take for granted that most countries have even worse work cultures or compensation structures.
That said, it's good for us to keep striving to find an ideal balance between work and personal life.
This is why I love birth rates declining: makes labor scarce and forces the better treatment of those still in the labor force.
We won’t find better work life balance until workers organize and old folks in charge with old ideas and values die out.
> why I love birth rates declining: makes labor scarce and forces the better treatment of those still in the labor force
I'd like to have Social Security benefits in 30-40 years tbh, so not a fan of potentially declining birth rates. That said, immigration is absolutely our superpower, and something we need to support.
We see the world differently, but I don’t fault your incentives and desired outcome. I see this as an empowerment and agency issue in a suboptimal economic system (working humans hard or to death without a lot of options, depending on jurisdiction, treating humans as a resource to extract from, broadly speaking).
(I am bootstrapping a non profit to buy unwanted fertility, funded through carbon markets; bias disclosed)
Immigration? You mean third world immigration like Canada?
Swedes and Canadians would like to have a word with you.
My parents were those "third world immigrants" as is my SO who is an MD.
Despite being the son of those "third world immigrants" I've funded companies and built products that have most likely protected your employer from nation states attacks by "third world" countries like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, and have absolutely protected NATO+.
Go crawl back into your hole and don't come out.
So ur a westerner. When a country brings in mass immigration all at once and insist on multi culturalism what do think that does to the recipient country?
Could u have started those companies in ur parents origin country?
There are always exceptions to the norm
I'm assuming IB = investment banking, PE = private equity, VC = venture capital, and PM = public market. To be clear, I did not work for a private equity firm itself (I do not posses the psychopathic ambition required to do so), but for a company that ended up owned by a firm; that was the terrible experience.
By PM I meant Product Management. A lot of PMs with MBAs are burned out IB Analysts who did the MBA to escape the grind.
> for a company that ended up owned by a firm; that was the terrible experience.
That's a bit different. Depending on the type of PE, it may have been a PE of last resort.
You only sell to Thoma Bravo if your company is an absolute dumpster fire and has no roadmap forward, so it needs drastic restructuring.
Sucks for line level ICs ofc.
It was Apollo, but asking me to differentiate between them would be like the dentist asking me which drill I'd prefer; I really don't know the technical details, but they all seem very unpleasant.
PE is a broad industry, as it literally just means allocation of capital in the private market.
For example, VC is a subset of PE.
Apollo, KKR, Guggenheim, and Thoma Bravo are PE funds that have practices dedicated to acquiring non-performing assets (basically companies that are near the verge of collapse)
For us regular US employees it was 6 days a week 12 hours per day. If you were more than 90 seconds late clocking in you were written up. 3 write ups and you're gone. 30 minute unpaid lunch break, but you weren't allowed to leave the site. To be honest, the strict stuff like that wasn't applicable to me because I was the only one there who could run the 5 axis CNC machines and edit the code. Everyone else was disposable.
One of the most memorable examples of not being treated like a human was when a coworker of mine wished to take one hour off in order to see his daughter graduate from high school. He had 4 kids at one time. But he lost one to cancer and two others to gang violence. He put in a time off request more than 5 months in advance so he could see his only remaining child graduate.
They denied his request. On the day of the graduation he clocked out and went to the graduation. He was gone maybe 35 minutes total. He saw his daughter walk across the stage and then he returned to work. They were waiting for him at the time clock and fired him.
When it comes to the interns, I saw a lot of yelling, grabbing by the arms while admonishing, and making them work without meals. All of the full time Korean employees had their lunch catered every day. The interns weren't allowed to eat with the full time employees and they weren't allowed to take any kind of meal breaks at all as for as I know.
I'm sure there was much more that went on behind closed doors, but seeing grown men grab 19 year old girls by their arms and shake them while yelling at them was pretty enlightening.
Thank you for the additional color. I will say that aside from the physical stuff, this doesn't sound all that different from the treatment that workers for Amazon or a call center would be subject to. I had my own wage-slave days and navigating this type of employment was an incredibly demoralizing way to start a working life. I certainly don't take for granted the cushy role that I have at a software company now, in spite of the fact that I work for a small company at a salary many here would find insulting.
I too am a low paid developer. I spent the first 20 years of my life doing skilled trade work and following a blue collar lifestyle. I'm now in my first developer role where my title is "Lead Developer." However, I'm the only developer here and I'm paid poorly.
But it is far better than working in a manufacturing facility or anything else I ever did while working for someone else.
I don't want to be the type of person who says "well, I paid my dues, you should too." I want things to be better for everyone. Now one should have to go through the things I went through as a young man. No one should have to be forced to work 6 days per week 12 hours per day simply to be able to barely make ends meet.
Yes, for a lot of people, these blue-collar jobs will be terminal positions, and they are necessary; they should be afforded dignity.
What’s really appalling is the lack of solidarity.
Solidarity is frowned upon here in Alabama. Our own governor has recently been doing her best to prevent any kind of worker solidarity.
terrible.
Can you name and shame the company? And the city / state where this took place?
Not so funny for Japan considering that immigration is the only way they can handle their rapidly aging population.
I hope they can get their decade old humanoid robot research fast enough to production, otherwise i really don't see how they can provide for their population while having to care for 35% to 40% of the population that is over 64.
And since it does not look like it, the realization that migrants are not sub humans and actually quite value will hit hard.
One thing they can do is incentivise women to rejoin the workforce after having kids, another is raise the retirement age to 70+. I think we'll see both in the next 5-10 years. Maybe they can kill two birds with one stone and have OAPs work as childcare providers.
On the topic of this "intern" scheme, I've seen a couple of NHK documentaries on it in the past year or two so it's definitely in the public consciousness now - although I get the impression the response it's got hasn't matched the outrage I would have hoped for. From what I saw a "technical intern" is another name for a farm/factory labourer, which is almost beyond parody.
In February the "technical intern" program was abolished and a new system set up in its place. I'm doubtful it will be much better, but I guess we'll find out eventually.
> is incentivise women to rejoin the workforce after having kids
They already did that - it was a core plank of Abenomics.
> raise the retirement age to 70+
Highly unlikely. It would be politically untenable and the LDP is dependent on a coalition with Komeito, which is heavily in favor of the welfare state.
> I'm doubtful it will be much better, but I guess we'll find out eventually
It won't get better. Same abuse but with a different name.
I honestly think one of Americas greatest strengths is the ability to move here from where ever and be able to join society with relatively low friction.
People go on and on about racism in America, but I have generally found that those people have absolutely no fucking idea what racism in a society actually looks like. You wanna see racism? Go be a minority in any country with a 90% majority race/culture.
Edit: Invariably people need to confuse "Racism is a bigger issue in other countries than the US" with "Racism never existed in the US".
Racism in the US is less to do with the people who moved there and more to do with the people who were taken there.
The USA was an apartheid country in the Jim Crow era. What could be more racist than segregation?
Jim Crow apartheid was so deeply pervasive that WW2 soldiers blood transfusion packets were segregated, so a stricken white soldier wouldn't be tarnished with black blood. That's quite something when you're fighting against the Nazis.
Yes, America was extremely racist.
But contemporary examples, especially against immigrants, contrasted against immigrants to mono cultural countries, would be much more relevant to the point I am making.
Look, your first paragraph was perfectly sensible and, in my view, true. It's one of America's greatest strengths.
Your second paragraph was a car crash of racism denial and you should probably take it back, rather than insisting it's everyone else's fault for reading it wrong
> "You wanna see racism? Go [somewhere else]"
They're not reading it wrong, they are packing an agenda into it. People chronically bring up the American south of 60+ years ago as examples of how contemporary full span America is racist. Just look at all the replies.
The outward shameless and crippling racism of 1940's American south is still in full force in many countries, but they never get attention for it because the minorities there are too minority to even show up on the radar.
Japan is probably going to collapse because giving a foreigner a position of power (commercial or government) is basically unthinkable. Meanwhile America "the most racist country on Earth" just had a black president for 8 years and has a congress composed of 25% minorities.
You can point to extreme xenophobia elsewhere without minimising American racism, instead you've decided to do both.
> giving a foreigner a position of power (commercial or government) is basically unthinkable
I mean, not totally unthinkable, thankfully. That's the only reason we have the Carlos Ghosn Hollywood-esque escape story.
To convey: I think this is a good example, of what Workaccount2 might have meant, we are somewhat sensitized for racism that we perceive the comparison of the situation with another countries as racism denial and i think this is because it suggest that we are perfect in some sense and can stop fighting for more equality, which we can absolutely not, there is still a lot of work in front of us.
I think that in the context of this discourse Workaccount2 has a point in what i believe Workaccount2 has meant, which is that the countries with the lowest amounts of xenophobia and racism will attract the most migrants... because who would like to live in a country in which you are oppressed.
And to come back to Japan: Japan seams to have a horrific problem with xenophobia and racism, at least this is the impression i get when i look at the discourse that happen in Japan from the outside[0] and read through Wikipedia[1]. What, does not mean that the US or EU has no racism, and can stop working, quite the opposite.
[0] This one is especially revealing IMHO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CraWEwbyapQ
[1] > Japan lacks any law which prohibits racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination. The country also has no national human rights institutions. Non-Japanese individuals in Japan often face human rights violations that Japanese citizens may not. In recent years, non-Japanese media has reported that Japanese firms frequently confiscate the passports of guest workers in Japan, particularly unskilled laborers.
> A significant number of apartments, and some motels, night clubs, brothels, sex parlours and public baths in Japan have put up signs stating that foreigners are not allowed, or that they must be accompanied by a Japanese person to enter.
> "Discrimination toward foreign nationals in their searches for homes continues to be one of the biggest problems", said the head of the Ethnic Media Press Centre.
> "Discrimination toward foreign nationals in their searches for homes continues to be one of the biggest problems", said the head of the Ethnic Media Press Centre.
> Some hospitals have been known to turn patients away if they could not confirm their residence status.
I don't think that's cause to dismiss the very real experiences of racism that people do have in the US. Racism kills people here too.
When my dad was a kid, black Americans couldn't use the same water fountain as whites; it's not exactly ancient history. My grandparents wouldn't share rooms with black people at their nursing homes, and I'm talking about a couple years ago. It didn't all end because LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. At some point I think it might have been better when it was all out in the open, so at least you knew what was going on.
Stories of discrimination would come up quite a bit about my father (black).
One time, he and my mother (white) were apartment hunting and this one landlord was excited to show them, when speaking over the phone. Once they showed up to check it out, that asshole slammed the door in their faces.
Discrimination persists through all aspects of life, employment, housing, etc. It's pathetic, really.
I literally got into an argument with a couple Germans on HN about this earlier today.
> I honestly think one of Americas greatest strengths is the ability to move here from where ever and be able to join society with relatively low friction.
It really depends on where you move to and where youre from.
Also, let's not sweep discrimination under the rug. It's ugly and wrong all around. Some places worse than others, but it's still bullshit and shouldn't be tolerated, especially when it comes to employment.
>only way they can handle their rapidly aging population
There's always the unspoken option, which is to not handle geriatric care well at all. Old people have been dying neglected and alone in JP for a while. When shit critically hits the fan, geriatric population will be either too senile to vote, or if they can vote, too weak to protest, and thus can be easily ignored as a bloc. Goal of cycling through disposable migrants to do shit jobs locals don't want to do is to keep value positive sectors crunching. IMO different dynamic when it's coming out of pockets of already squeezed tax base to take care of boomers. There'sgoing to be a lot of, you lived a long life, so sad, too bad, because good luck convincing ethnocentric youth to take another L for the team by treating migrants better, the only social prestige pressed these days is knowing outsiders have it worse. Societies have no problem finding a way to be callous to poor, kids, women, minorities etc, they'll find a way to rationalize being incredibly callous to elders.
> which is to not handle geriatric care well at all
There is a recent Japanese Sci-Fi movie that came out at Cannes recently called Plan 75 [0] that touches on that option
Ofc, Japan is a democracy and old people vote.
Even if the LDP ruled for much of Japan's democratic history, it's still vulnerable to losing power due to public anger (eg. Kishida's corruption scandal).
Imagine how angrier Japanese voters would be with horrible geriatric care.
I went to viewing of this during TIFF last year. But unfortunately ZZZ through most of it, no fault of the film which I enjoyed for the parts I was up.
>Japan is a democracy and old people vote
I think when non-working gerontocratic voting block interests confronts with interests of tax paying workforce trying to keep head above water, the elderly are going to lose. When under 50 year olds have to decide between their reduction in their QoL / services vs neglecting the old, including their own kin, they're going to eventually chose to throw their kin under the bus. If problem is just structurally not resolvable (which IMO it's not), LDP will claw their way back from whoever the next DPJ upstart is after they fail. Which is to say, I can imagine JP getting some robots going, and some migrant worker for elderly care, but if neither is enough, I think more likely politics will over promise and underdeliver until elderly accept their lot because you can only push the young so much. It's going to take a few political cycles for people to accept the "normal", but if any "democracy" can rig the system to survive that process, it's LDP/Japan.
Dead body cleanup is going to be a booming career
> I hope they can get their decade old humanoid robot research fast enough to production, otherwise i really don't see how they can provide for their population while having to care for 35% to 40% of the population that is over 64.
Aaaaaaand cue Roujin Z
An indie Japanese-Vietnamese movie recently came out called "Along the Sea" giving a slice of life view of this [0]
I recommend watching it sometime.
[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qU2xaRBeFiU&embeds_referring_e...
On the general theme, I loved the book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Trembling_(film)?wpro...