Compensation granted to agricultural cooperative

February 26, 2015

JA Soma employees awarded 27 million yen for income lost to nuclear disaster

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150226p2a00m0na016000c.html

Several dozen employees at an agricultural cooperative in Fukushima Prefecture were awarded 27.23 million yen in compensation for losing their income due to the nuclear disaster in a settlement mediated by the Nuclear Damage Compensation Dispute Resolution Center, it has been learned.

Seventy-nine employees at JA Soma in the city of Minamisoma won the compensation in an out-of-court settlement mediated by the government-backed alternative dispute resolution (ADR) center after Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) refused to compensate them.

"The settlement attached importance to the actual damage, unlike TEPCO's formalities that drew a line (for compensation eligibility)," said Naoto Akiyama, a lawyer specialized in the issue of nuclear damage compensation, in praising the settlement.

According to sources close to the case, JA Soma's service area covers the cities of Minamisoma and Soma as well as the village of Iitate and the town of Shinchi. In the wake of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster, JA Soma's business deteriorated, forcing it to cut back on its bonuses on seven occasions between the spring of 2011 and the spring of 2013.

All of JA Soma's 405 employees at the time filed a compensation claim with TEPCO, but the utility refused to pay damage to 79 of them on the grounds that they were living and working at offices in Soma and Shinchi, where evacuation orders were not in place.

The 79 employees filed a case with the ADR center in November 2013, saying, "It is unfair for the compensation coverage to be different depending on where we work, considering the fact that we are hired under the same terms of employment."

The ADR center's mediator made a settlement proposal to TEPCO, asking the utility to pay compensation to the plaintiffs. TEPCO accepted the proposal in January this year, stating, "We understand that the center gave consideration to the specific circumstances, where the employees were working at an agricultural cooperative that was seriously affected by the nuclear plant accident."

Lawyer Akiyama said, "The settlement has paved the way for the possibility of employees of businesses being awarded compensation even if they were working outside areas subject to damage coverage, as long as their businesses' service areas were partially inside the compensated zones."

A public relations official at TEPCO's Fukushima Revitalization Headquarters said, "There have been other cases settled via ADR, but we can't disclose the content."