People around the world are watching the situation in Japan with deep concern and sympathy for the victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami, and with worry over the dangerous situation at the Fukusima Daiichi nuclear power plant. For UE, those concerns are intensified by our close fraternal relationship with Zenroren, Japan’s large progressive union confederation, a connection that goes back more than 15 years. UE members have met Zenroren members during UE solidarity visits to Japan and Zenroren delegations to the U.S., and Zenroren has aided UE locals in several difficult organizing and bargaining struggles with Japanese-owned employers.
According to Keisuke Fuse, director of Zenroren’s international bureau, one-third of the members of the Zenroren municipal workers union are missing from one city in Iwate prefecture, on Japan’s hard-hit northeast coast. An elder care home in nearby Miyagi prefecture was completely wiped out by the tsunami, killing all the patients and all of the employees, who were Zenroren members. Many other Zenroren members in the five affected northeastern prefectures are among the over 16,000 Japanese people who are missing. (More than 5,000 people have been confirmed dead, and over 400,000 are living in emergency shelters.)
Immediatley after the quake and tsunami, Zenroren set up a Disaster Response Committee. The committee decided that its immediate focus must be on loss of life, the injured, rescue efforts, and helping to provide necessities of life to surviving victims, especially evacuees. In a March 14 message to Zenroren’s worldwide labor allies, the committee wrote, “...our medical, transport (and) municipal workers unions have already been working hard (in) every possible way to provide support for their members and people in the area.”
The committee was preparing to send a team of nine doctors and nurses to Miyagi on March 18; the team consists of members of a Zenroren-affliliated medical workers' union. Because winter weather (including snow) has returned to the northeast, lack of heat for many evacuees is now an additional serious problem.
Zenroren has asked its friends around the world for messages of solidarity, as well as financial support for the union federation’s relief work. UE’s Research and Education Fund – which coordinates our international solidarity work – is prepared to accept and coordinate donations by UE members, locals and regions to Zenroren’s relief fund. To make a tax-free contribution online or by check, visit the Support page of the UE International Solidarity site. Be sure to include the words “Zenroren” or “Japan” to designate your donation to Zenroren’s disaster relief efforts.