FUKUOKA (Kyodo) The Fukuoka High Court on Monday upheld a lower court ruling ordering an agent representing four Chinese former interns and a sewing firm where they trained to pay them a total of ¥4.4 million for making them work long hours for low pay.
The high court thus turned down an appeal by the agent based in the town of Oguni, Kumamoto Prefecture.
According to the original ruling in January at the Kumamoto District Court, the interns, who were all women in their 20s and came to Japan in 2006, were forced to sew from around 8:30 a.m. to as late as 3 a.m. the next morning for extremely low wages through August 2007.