Japanese TV news reports on poor working conditions of foreign English teachers

The teacher of the Canadian teacher who was when
I was a high school student and the adviser in the
soccer club that had come from South Africa (Eng
-lish teacher’s assistant had been sometimes.)
was good teacher liked by the student.

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Ouch. Machine translation….

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“as always, there are 2 sides to every story”

The issue is, which side is bigger?

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Bull Shit,

Aint no companies are working with the teachers who are native speakers. Did you check the video. I was interviewed by the cosmo global and the teacher who also got interviewed together with me was not answring any questions but said that “what ever he says”. I gave all the answers to the questions.

But just because I was not allowing them to take a photo copy of my passport I was dropped out. On top of that teachers working for cosmo global always drink with me and they complaint.

My advise to Japan is if you dont like the natives then just dont call them by giving them false hope. We dont do that to any japanese when they come over.

I am smart! I have a bunch of girls who take care of my Bills and payments.

My messege to Native english speakers is to be smart and play the same game as they play with you.

bab

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A quick regard to the video: It’s fine that Ms. Lara’s direct hire arrangement was depicted as all rosy. I would like to see them interview a direct hire teacher who is NOT located in a metropolitan, well-funded school. Or really, any ALT outside of Tokyo/Osaka.

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Are you a manager at Interac?

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I work for Interac and I get 0% for the summer. The percentage of pay during the summer break differs from BOE to BOE. Interac does not have a one contract that is the same for everybody. Interac has many many contracts.

As for the person in the video and the discussion of the December pay. His net pay was about 120,000 yen. Net pay is Interac’s way of saying gross pay. Then from the 120,000 you take the rent and other deductions from that.

Why do you work 29.5 hours? Do you have shakai hoken? No!!
Do you know and understand what shakai hoken means and what does it entail?

When a BOE tells a dispatch comapany that they dont want to do the contract, the dispatch has the option of helping you find an another job, but will they…no one really knows. My prior dispatch company didnt.

By the way,　do you way gyomu-itaku contracts are illegal?
Under the Baic Education Law, it states that the principal must have control over all of his/her staff. Under gyomu-itaku, the dipatch comapany controls your work and not the school.

BTW…direct hire jobs pay about 270,000 to 320,000 yen a month. Plus you can also receive up to 25 paid holiday days.
How many does Interac give you….5!

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“For the gentleman in the video who discussed his paychecks:”
I am Erich, the one who had my paychecks discussed in the video.

“I recognize his pay stub as it is the same that I receive. I won’t name the dispatch company, “
The dispatch company in question is called Interac, although sometimes it also goes under the name Maxceed. While working at one BoE, although I worked for Interac, I was told that I had to lie to the BoE and say that I worked for Maxceed. This kind of deception of the BOE is practiced by Interac across Japan, is shady at best, and illegal at most.

“but the payment calculation is disclosed in full prior to signing the contract. Specifically, December pay is calculated at 75% of monthly salary in accordance with the vacation schedule, and 120,000yen is the correct total for December, post apartment rent and other monthly deductions.”
First, Interac has a habit of over selling its contracts to its ALTs. I was working in Wakayama before I decided to move to Osaka and found a job with interac. I was told before I started that I would make ¥260,000 a month. This was also reflected in the advertisements on Gaijinpot.com. It wasn’t until AFTER I quit my job in Wakayama, my replacement was found at my old job, my apartment contract was cancelled and I was in the process of moving to Osaka that I received a copy of the schedule and contract from Interac. Only THEN did I discover that I would not be working everyday during the week, I would not recieve the same amount of money each month (monthly pay was based upon the days that you work each month) and there were sometimes a week of no work with no payment in the month, I got no sick days (but I had money deducted from my paycheck if I was sick, even when I had a doctors note), no paid vacation (zero yen) and no guarantee of future employment. Looking back know, I realize that I had been a bit naive when accepting the job, but it was my second job in Japan and I had only been here eight months; I really had no clue as to how deceptive companies in Japan can be to sell their contracts.

At the last “exit interview” that I had with Interac, three of the seven ALTs besides myself, all non-union members, complained that they had felt deceived by the difference between the contract that was advertised online, and the one that was presented to them at the last minute right before training began.

Also, in spite of what Interac/Maxceed boasts on their website, I got zero assistance with housing. Zilch. I was told they they didn’t help with that kind of thing, and I was given the name of a youth hostel as my only lead (which was insulting because I was living in Japan, not traveling through it). So that December amount listed is before I paid my rent, utilities, insurance and bought my food and train passes. Knowing this, does the amount listed in the report still seem like the correct amount to you?

“One thing that r videowasn’t mentioned is that our dispatch company guarantees a paycheck for summer vacation (calculated at 60% of salary), even though there is no work for the entire month of August.”
This depends on the contract with the BoE and varies from place to place across the country. At my BOE there was no pay guaranteed for summer or winter vacation, not to mention the “vacation” in between contracts in March and April. Zero yen received for these time periods, and the gaps in between paychecks during the winter and summer vacation were as much as 2.5 months. Fortunately, most people don’t find themselves in situations this bad, but our BOE was this bad and this situation cause a very high turnover rate. The only reason I stayed for three semesters is because I loved the students and the teachers and I chose to stay and fight to improve the situation.

“At my BOE, teachers who take summer vacation do NOT receiveh any pay whatsoever (they only have a handful of paid vacation days per year, and my teachers save them for Christmas). Direct-hire teachers would face a 0yen pay stub unless they are willing to work throughout the summer.”
The result of me staying in Matsubara and fighting against the illegal contract with the General Union of Osaka is that the BOE eventually caved in and returned to direct hire. The difference between now and then? Now the directly hired ALTs have:
1) year round pay
2) unemployment insurance
3) paid vacation (9 paid vacation days in the summer, 8 paid vacation days in the winter, 10 “anytime” vacation days that they can use throughout the year – this is something that everyone is entiled to by law called Nenkyu (年休)). The number of available PAID vacation days increases each year.
4) real Japanese insurance called Shakai Hoken or National Health/Employees Insurance (you don’t have to pay 100% up front with this insurance and hope to be payed back by a foreign company like Interglobal because it is not a for-profit insurance company). There is a 30% co-pay but you can get additional private insurance like Aflac to cover that difference.
5) 4.2 months worth of bonuses!!!!
6) stability that dispatched ALTs don’t have because there is no dispatch company between them and their job that could possibly loose a contract.
7) overall, including the bonuses, more pay than was received under Interac.
When the ALTs do go in during the summer or winter vacation, they might give a seminar to the other teachers, they might collaborate with teachers to plan for the upcoming semester, but mostly they just read all day; they are essentially paid to study.

To each his own, but I know which deal sounds better to me.

“On the other side, JETs and direct hires are often required to work the long “Japanese” hours. I have spoken with a number of JETs who have had to report to local BOEs on days they have no assignment, merely to fill their contractual obligations, and have little recourse in filing complaints about being required to report to school at 7am or stay until 6pm (for clubs, etc). Don’t get me wrong, I think an ALT should be involved with the children; I just think it should be their own initiative, not a contractual obligation.”
This is a misinterpretation of reality. Teachers don’t stay late because they are required to, they do so because they feel they need to. Labor law states that no employer can force their employees to work more than 45 hours a week, over six days. Teachers’ unions exists all over the country, but if teachers don’t join them and don’t fight the long hours, it is because they want to put in those extra hours, they feel they need to or they just aren’t strong enough to fight back. My perception is that it is just a cultural caveat and teachers just feel like they should stay. I have stayed until 6 or 7 pm a few times, I didn’t get paid for it, I just chose to put in extra work for the kids and teachers. In the schools that I worked I also spotted inefficiencies in the teachers’ methods, like grading hundreds of papers with a red pen instead of changing the multiple choice portions to an electronic bubble sheet method; that alone would reduce working hours tremendously.

I taught English conversation to a member of the PTA in Matsubara and as I was driven home past the school in which I taught at 9pm once a week, my student would often comment on how insane it was that people still appeared to be working in the office that late at night. Those long hours aren’t really normal, but they won’t change unless the teachers really want them to change.

“Moreover, in a prior report (which JapanProbe had mentioned some time ago), an ALT was interviewed and mentioned that she arrived at school at 9am and left at 5pm. Without clarification about her daily breaks and such, the reporter simply added up the hours and decided the ALT was working a full 40 hours every week.”
In the city of Matsubara, during the contract periods I worked 40 hours a week. 8:30am to 4:30pm and every hour I wasn’t teaching, I was grading papers, visiting with students (including the special need kids), or collaborating with teachers for the next week’s lesson plans. I was REQUIRED to be there during those hours, and I was busy the entire time. If your contract requires you to be somewhere from a certain time to a certain time, then you are, in fact, working during that time, regardless of what your breaks are. My situation was such that I was literally working constantly as well as legally.

At a different city, Sakai City, I worked in elementary schools where I was contractually only supposed to be there when teaching and I was not supposed to do planning because I was expected to rely on Interac’s elementary school materials (I did end up doing a ton of unpaid preperation and collaboration anyway because the other teachers and I found Interac’s materials to be insufficient). Perhaps this the kind of contract you are thinking of with your last point. This is not the way all contracts are structured throughout Interac.

“There was significant uproar, since it meant she was being forced to work over the 29.5hr/wk limit,”
This limit is aribitrary. Who set this limit and why?
Interac set this limit following the lead of other companies like NOVA that have historically tried to limit employees to less that 75% of a normal work week (75% of 40 hours is 30 hours) because they believe that this means that they will not have to pay for 50% of their ALT’s Shakai Hoken/ Employee’s health and Pension, and unemployment insurance. There is no law that states this is the case however, and all ALTs that are working for Interac where they must be at the school for fourty hours a week, or 29.5 are all eligible for these insurance plans. In fact, every union and non-union member that I have heard of that challenged Interac on this 29.5 hour myth has won and been awarded the insurances that they wanted.

“and suggested that ALTs were being mistreated.”
If the ALT is being mistreated, it is by the dispatch company that lies to them about their eligibility for things that they have a right for themselves to decide wether or not they want to enroll into.

“Again, the dispatch company is in place so that schools cannot force teachers to stay past their assigned times. So on the one hand the gimu-itaku is in place to protect teachers, but if the contract is “illegal” then BOEs are suddenly free to obligate ALTs to work past 29.5hrs/wk.”
No.
The dispatch company is not here for your protection, the dispatch company is here to make money. It is perfectly feasible to have a part time Haken contract that would fit the legal model of Japan, but neither the BOEs or the dispatch companies want that to happen because then the ALT have more legal control over their own situation. A proper dispatch contract could be part time and could be less than 29.5 hour a week, but if you are teaching a lot of classes and at least three grades and collaborating with teachers, that really isn’t enough time to get the job done.

“The quip about being paid only for class hours is, at least for my dispatch company, a fabrication. While we are required to submit timesheets, it is used only to verify completing our assignments. Both class periods and “preparation” periods are counted towards our weekly 29.5hr limit, and aside from holiday schedules, pay is salaried. The majority of english teachers who are paid strictly according to the number of classes they teach are at eikaiwas, most notorious of which was of course NOVA.”
I am assuming that you are speaking of the quip at the end of the first movie. This was precisely true for my Sakai city contract. I was told to use the elementary school materials, to stay at the school only when teaching and not stay later. The teachers and I always found the lessons to be insufficient however, and I received no additional payment for the preparation time that I did on my own or with the other teachers.

If you are referring to the statement that I made where I was told that I didn’t qualify for insurance because I taught less than six hours a day (a statement that does not actually reflect the law), then I will say that this 100% true and I have an email from the head of the Osaka office that proves this.

“Another merit of dispatch companies is that in the event a BOE terminates an ALT’s contract “without reason”, the company is able to quickly find another contract and assist in relocation expenses — all while keeping the ALT on the payroll during the interim “unemployment”. “
Unless Interac has recently changed their policies with at the same time they were forced to change their stance on unemployment insurance, this is patently false. This statement implies that Interac hires all ALTs as normal, full-time, general employees (一般) and pays them steadily even when there is no contract for them to teach under, the same way the people in the office are paid steadily. This would be a great deal if it were true, and it is one thing that all of the unionized members of Interac should be demanding. My experience directly contracts this:

I was never given a paycheck in between contracts (except once, due to the fact that the Osaka office sent me to one school for one month as an addition to my current contract at the time and forgot to have me sign another one month contract). No ALT that I have ever known from the Osaka Interac office, union member or non union member, ever received money consistently as a general, full time employee (一般) from Interac without a contract. I have seen Interac ALT contracts from all over the country and none of them ever promised a guarantee of money in between contracts.

After the Matsubara contract was found to be illegal by the Osaka Labor Board and Interac lost the contract, I did not receive payment from Interac. The GU in Osaka even demanded to the head office that I be paid wages as you suggest that Interac does, and Interac did not pay one yen for the time in between contracts, even though they never legally fired me.

Furthermore, I witnessed a co-worker of mine get replaced at the BOEs request in the city of Sakai and she was not given a new assignment or any payment, she wasn’t even given the severance pay that she should have been entitled to because her contract was breeched by Interac. I encouraged her to fight back, be she wasn’t a union member and she wasn’t the fighting type so she just searched for a new job.

“There will always be a few who end up in an unfortunate situation, but a safety net is better than none.”
I agree with you. It is too bad that until the law recently changed and forced Interac to enroll ALTs to enroll everyone with a six month contract into unemployment that there has been no safety net.

“Dispatch companies are not without their problems (the lack of transparency in gimu-itaku for the school/BOE is a legitimate concern), but that does not mean every ALT coming from gimu-itaku is having a hellish time (I certainly am not).”
True. Some areas of Japan set aside more money for for their ALTs and there is enough money for the dispatch company as well and everyone is happy. Osaka was not that way, partially because the whole prefecture is still bankrupt. This means that there is really only enough money to pay the ALTs, because when the a dispatch company is involved with a meager budget, it isn’t the dispatch company that gets shortchanged, rather, it is the ALT.

Anyone living in Japan can use Japan’s version of the freedom of information act to get a hold of the contracts that the dispatch company has with t BOE. I was able to do that easily in Matsubara and I was able to prove that the contracts were illegal. It only cost me the price of the photocopies.

“And government programs (JET) and direct hires have their own problems too.”
This is an irrelevant statement that has no bearing on the discussion. Every occupation in every country across the world can be found to “have their own problems”. This does not automatically mean that introducing another party that expects to receive payment (like a dispatch company) can resolve these problems.

“Getting rid of dispatch companies will only to hurt English education more, especially for rural BOEs that cannot afford JET’s high pricetag, and otherwise cannot attract ALTs with comparatively low direct-hire salaries.”
The thought BOEs cannot afford JET’s price tag is laughable; for the most part it isn’t a matter of ability it is just desire. If a BOE thinks that it can get a native English speaker in front of its children at a bargain price AND abdicate responsibility to someone else they often will do so without regard as to the kind of environment they are creating for their ALTs.
Additionally, I would like to suggest that if a BOE truly is strapped for cash and wants to save money, they should only be paying one party by hiring directly. Nothing is to stop BOEs from advertising on gaijinpot.com for their positions and finding compatible teachers, especially during a global recession.

Matsubara doesn’t pay very much for its direct hire. Most Direct hired ALTs that I have spoken to make around ¥300,000 a month. Matsubara, including its bonuses, pays considerably less, about ¥250,000 before taxes and they had no problem finding ALTs to fill their slots, even though they only advertised the positions on the local city websites and everyone except the returning ALTs found out by word of mouth.

Comment by fh
2009-07-31 04:09:03
“A quick regard to the video: It’s fine that Ms. Lara’s direct hire arrangement was depicted as all rosy. I would like to see them interview a direct hire teacher who is NOT located in a metropolitan, well-funded school. Or really, any ALT outside of Tokyo/Osaka.”
I would like to see this too. I would wager that the ALTs interviewed would be quite satisfied with their employment, especially if they previously had experiences with dispatch companies.

If anyone is interested in fact checking anything I have written here, I have documents and emails that back up everything I have said.
Anyone interested in helping to work towards better working conditions in Japan for ALTs, Interac or otherwise, please visit interaction.org or contact your local unions (http://nambufwc.org/, http://www.generalunion.org/, http://fukuoka.generalunion.org/)

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in what way?

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indeed

i think this whole thing should be more about how terrible interac are.

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Peppy Kids Club instructs their teachers to falsify their time sheets so as to keep the Japanese gov’t unaware of how many hours teachers are actually working. This illegal business practice allows the company to not pay for shakkai hokken. This practice is widespread in Eikaiwas all over Japan.

Thank God the LDP is on its way out. Hopefully the DPJ will step in and do something about the B.S. that gaijin teachers have to put up with in Japan otherwise be ready for a mass Exodus when the new VISA stipulations take effect linking shakkai hokken enrollment to visa renewal.

Eikaiwas have been exploiting foreigners for decades. It is time for both Japanese and non-japanese alike to stand up to the zaibatsu mentality that is ruining Japanese society.

Workers UNITE! Fight for your rights!

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I think that depends. I don’t know about the particular case of you, but I heared of quite a few (so-called) English teachers working in Japan on legally shaky ground(that is, not with valid working visa) and also those teaching English without proper training, experience or even degree/diploma in Teaching Engliahs as a Second Language. Well, in that case, what do you expect?

I think that might be same with some other foreign workers.
Those without proper visa or decent skills are just letting their boss exploit themselves. Those people would be exploited in any country, incluinding their own – and I don’t understand why some are expecting their host country to treat them special just because they are foreigners(while blaming every problems on their host country).
I know that some foreigners with marketable skills(aside from English and university degree in some unrelated field) and decent personalities are often sought after by many companies. Come on, foreigners, immigrants, visitors, we always need to, and should, make extra efforts to live and work in foreign countries.
If your situation isn’t quite good, there are always other better opportunities and you got to work for it. If you don’t do anything of sort and just complain and blame somebody else for it, then it’s just plain pathetic.

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Thanks for the compliments on my house.

1) I no longer work for Interac, so my living situation has stablilzed dramatically.
2) You can buy that same computer (Intel iMac 17″) at sofmap.com for ¥50,000. It isn’t exactly breaking the bank…
3) The external monitor that is plugged in for screen spanning was given to me by a friend that left japan and did not need it any longer.

I put in 100% at school, and in the community.
Thanks again for the compliment.

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I’m the only one who complained in Japanese, but anyone reading my Japanese will know instantly that I’m not native. I was just doing it to help the crazy person understand.

That they are Japanese is irrelevant, I think. The crazy part is pretty funny, though.

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This Canadian guy worked for Peppy Kids Club, iTTTi and got arrested.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/11/02/bc-madercharged.html

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