Consulate Job Practices Can Be a Nightmare for U.S. Workers : Workplace: Shielded from most American labor laws, some consulates are accused of tolerating discrimination and refusing to pay overtime.

Most employers could count on trouble from the authorities if they refused to pay time-and-a-half for overtime, failed to withhold Social Security taxes from paychecks and stood accused of tolerating racist and sexist conduct around the office.

But American officialdom has done nothing to bother the Japanese Consulate in Los Angeles--where, employees say, just such practices have been in evidence.

Shielded from most U.S. labor laws by international agreements and longstanding practice, the consulate for years has had a rocky relationship with some of its American employees.

A decade ago, the Americans threatened to strike. Last year, most signed, but chose not to press, a petition for better wages and benefits, extra pay for overtime and a voice in how the consulate was run. Some talked of getting together with workers at other Japanese missions in the United States to form a union. Every year, a few Americans quit.

This spring, the employees bitterly complained to a Japanese inspection team about their salaries--the first such grumbling from so-called local staff members that Japanese Foreign Ministry officials could recall.

Now, with recent wage adjustments and some administrators making an effort to smooth relations with the Americans, the turmoil has subsided. But the employees have gotten vivid instruction in a little-understood fact: The 1,700 Americans who work in this country for foreign missions have fewer rights and protections than the rest of the work force.

“It’s really an international disgrace,” said one Southern Californian who quit a job at the Japanese Consulate last year after he was asked to work 200 hours of overtime in a two-month period for what he said was 75% of his regular wage.

Experts say that consulates and other foreign missions operate in a legal no-man’s land, with employment practices that are a pastiche of the foreign and the domestic.

At the Japanese Consulate, for instance, employees get days off for U.S. and Japanese holidays. While some workers say the pay is less than at other consulates or in private industry, they receive, in Japanese fashion, a year-end bonus equal to a month’s salary.

Currently, they are paid their regular hourly wage for overtime work. That’s because foreign missions are exempt from the wage and hour laws that require American employers to pay time-and-a-half. Still, it is more than many workers get in Japan, where long hours are the rule and most overtime is considered “voluntary” and therefore unpaid.

Also, since foreign governments can’t be required to act as agents for U.S. authorities, the Japanese Consulate withholds no state or federal income tax or Social Security tax from its employees’ pay. Employees are expected to pay the levies themselves.

Employment practices at other local consulates are similarly hodgepodge.

At the South African Consulate, local staffers--most of whom are British, Irish or Filipino, rather than South African or American--all pay South African income taxes, according to Liz Aliado, an administrative assistant. They are not paid for overtime but can take extra vacation time later.

An American worker at the French Consulate, asked to compare Americans’ pay and benefits with those of officials sent from France, replied: “Oh my gosh, they don’t!” After checking with the French Embassy in Washington, the American said the consulate’s position was that its employment practices were “confidential.”

Extraordinary work rules don’t necessarily translate into disgruntled employees, however.

Many employees of the Japanese Consulate say they like their work and get along well with the top Japanese officials who are assigned to the mission for two- or three-year stints. Tensions were eased in July by pay raises that averaged 6.9% and a one-time payment that corrected a shortfall in overtime pay during a 12-month period. And even some of those angered by the consulate’s employment practices stay on the job because they enjoy the chance to use their language skills or are reluctant to face the uncertainties of a job hunt.

Moreover, officials at the consulate, which coordinates Japanese trade and cultural relations in Southern California and serves travelers between the United States and Japan, say they are trying to listen better to their 25-odd American employees, who work as analysts, clerks, drivers and administrators.

“Although we may not be able to accomplish or accommodate some things, we have to look at what are the aspirations and desires and frustrations and so on” of the American workers, said Gunkatsu Kano, who in June assumed the No. 2 post of deputy consul general. “And, as much as possible, we will consult with Tokyo in improving the standards and the levels of benefits.”

But Kano acknowledged that Japanese officials come to Los Angeles with no training in American labor relations and, often, with little awareness of American sensibilities--shortcomings that the employees say can be glaring.

“They’re playing it by ear,” said Michael Jamentz, a former cultural affairs analyst at the Los Angeles consulate who is now studying at Harvard University. “Whether things are settled to the satisfaction of local employees depends on whether the person running the office is sympathetic to them.”

Jamentz has mostly positive memories of his seven years at the consulate. But as many who have studied U.S.-Japanese business relations have noted, the two societies’ notions about work are differ greatly. Jamentz said some American employees have adapted to Japanese ways better than others.

Indeed, some American workers say that “sympathy” often is in short supply and explanations for Japanese conduct are lacking.

“They keep everything hush-hush,” said Alvaro A. Maldonado, an Alhambra man who has been a driver at the consulate more than three years. “If you don’t ask, they don’t tell,” he said. “And the rule of thumb is: Never ask.”

The unusual legal status of consular employees further muddies relations. One former employee of the Japanese Consulate, for instance, said Japanese officials told her that when she entered the mission, which occupies three stories of a Little Tokyo office tower, she was on Japanese soil.

In fact, that notion--known as “extraterritorialty”--has been discredited for decades. State Department lawyers say it ceased to play any part in international relations when several treaties were signed in the 1960s and with passage of a federal law in 1976 that limited the legal immunities extended to foreign missions and their staffs.

The Japanese claim, though, planted a powerful impression in the woman’s mind. To her, it means that employees of the consulate “have no rights.”

Elsewhere, too, confusion reigns.

Take the question of discriminatory practices at work. Since 1985, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has claimed authority to investigate charges of race, sex and age discrimination made against foreign missions. Yet in California, attorneys for the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, to which the EEOC refers most bias cases, say they believe that foreign missions are exempt from bias laws.

Amid the uncertainty, some current and past employees of the Japanese Consulate said they assumed they had nowhere to turn when their bosses engaged in what they viewed as discrimination.

In one case, Maldonado recalled smoldering as he chauffeured a consular official and a visitor from Tokyo while they chatted about Los Angeles’ racial makeup. According to Maldonado, the consular officer said: “There’s too many blacks and too many Hispanics, and you can’t go anywhere.”

One American who since has quit his job at the consulate said he was ordered in June, 1988, to make sure that neither a black nor a woman was chosen to address a group of Americans who were leaving to teach English in Japan.

Consul General Hiromoto Seki bridles at the suggestion that the consulate tolerates racism. He said Maldonado (who has a bachelor’s degree in Japanese from Cal State Los Angeles) is a lackadaisical worker who does not understand enough Japanese to know what his passengers are saying. Women speak frequently at consulate gatherings, Seki added, although he could not recall a talk being given by a black during his 21-month tenure.

In any event, he said: “One word here or there does not represent the policies or characteristics of our consulate.”

The policy, according to Seki, is to promote close ties with American minorities, an area in which he describes himself as a “pioneer.”

Seki said he encouraged the Japan Business Assn. to establish regional committees to address minority concerns in Southern California. He also persuaded Japanese manufacturers to donate $200,000 worth of musical instruments to the Music Center of Los Angeles County’s lending program for disadvantaged students. And at his suggestion, he said, the Japanese government has underwritten visits to Japan for California leaders of minority organizations.

Japanese officials, nonetheless, are being urged to be more sensitive to matters of race, said Kano, the deputy consul. With little exposure to ethnic diversity at home, he said, Japanese people sometimes bring with them attitudes that Americans find offensive.

“The cause may be basically ignorance, and therefore non-sensitivity,” he said. “When one is ignorant of a situation, they tend to subscribe to any easy stereotype or bias.”

Americans who have worked for the consulate say that uncertainty over their legal rights and the fear of provoking consular officials have left them feeling powerless to improve their working conditions.

“We have no way to redress our situation,” Maldonado said. The employees abandoned the one path they considered: forwarding a petition to Seki. After 16 of the 26 local staff members signed a petition last year, all but a few got cold feet and decided against submitting it.

For most employees of foreign missions, it seems, the marketplace provides enough protection that tougher oversight by the U.S. government is unnecessary.

Typically, foreign missions must offer competitive wages and benefits to attract capable employees, said Paula Todd, a principal in Washington with Towers Perrin, a benefits consulting firm.

“You don’t have to work for them,” Todd said. “I suspect they would be unable to attract and maintain people if their practices were too far out of line.”

In Little Tokyo, meantime, Seki and Kano are taking steps to clear up confusion about the consulate’s employment practices. For the past year, new employees have received handbooks detailing the consulate’s policies. Officials try now to make clear the rules regarding taxes and pensions.

The Japanese and their U.S. employees still have a way to go in understanding each other, though.

To Kano, the American drivers’ complaints about scheduling, for instance, can sound like so much dawdling. “It’s, ‘I’ve been to the airport driving a visitor, so I don’t want to go a second time,’ ” he said.

To Maldonado, the Japanese consuls’ demands can seem like slave-driving. Told to work 12 hours of overtime on a recent Saturday--including three trips to Los Angeles International Airport--Maldonado told his boss, “This is absolutely unreasonable,” he recalled.

His boss’ response? “He doesn’t see it as unreasonable.”

Times Staff Writer Sam Jameson in Tokyo contributed to this story.