Job Discussion Forums

[MotherF]

Greetings from Mexico!

I worked in Japan in 1996-1997--ages ago--but people remember it. A friend of a friend is frustrated with her life and wants adventure and is thinking of applying with this company Gaba, wanted my opinion...
Can you help me form one?
Thanks.

[TokyoLiz]

Gaba is one of the exploiters of foreign young people eager to live in Japan. The one-on-one model was in the news a lot last year because women working in Gaba locations were sexually harassed by clients, and the management continued to allow harassers to attend and molest or verbally abuse the workers.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/06/16/issues/harassers-exploit-gabas-man-man-lesson-format/

Recently, the unions have gone after Gaba for unfair labour practices. Workers were not employees but contractors, denying them social insurance.

You can read more on the General Union website -

http://generalunion.org/Joomla/index.php/gaba

From what I have heard from Gaba contractors, the pay is very low. One person I met last year has an income from her home country and supplemented her income with Gaba and tutoring.

[jesso92]

Hey! I'm also a Mexican citizen, and trying to get a job in Japan. I haven't applied to GABA yet, even though they would be the most likely company to offer me work, since they explicitly state that they will consider all nationalities for the job, not just English speaking ones.

The reason why I haven't applied to Gaba, is that you won't get a solid salary, you get like a commission sort of payment per lesson taught or something like that. Salary is not guaranteed to be enough for you to survive, specially since GABA operates mostly in the biggest cities, where rent is high. So, you gotta really hustle to make ends meet, maybe get a part time job on the side. So, it really is a shitty situation, when you compare it to having a solid salary and maybe even benefits if you work with a good company.

But hey, if your friend is Mexican too, then tough luck, beggars can't be choosers. It's really hard to get an English teaching job in Japan when you are from a non English speaking country. If she really wants to go to Japan, you know, apply everywhere.

Now since we are both paisanos How was it that you got work in Japan back then? Was it English teaching? If so which company did you work for?

[MotherF]

Thank you, no my friend is not Mexican. I'm not either--at least not born Mexican. I was an English teacher and didn't have much problem getting a job as I am a native speaker and it was still the end of the boom in English teaching in Japan.
Thanks for the help, I was quite suprised when the website bragged that their "top teachers" made up to 300,000 yen a month--I was making 280,000 working 25 hours a week in 1996! So I suspected this was the type of organization that is maybe okay for a fresh college grad, in the same way working in a coffee shop is maybe okay for a fresh college grad. Thank you so much for the links Liz--you may have just saved her.

[Lamarr]

There's stuff about them on a thread on here called "GABA good or gabaldegook". I worked for them a bit recently. You get paid per lesson so your salary varies each month. Some months are good while others are bad. I also had issues with their ridiculous "negative evaluation" system, which they use against you to threaten your job and deny you pay raises. See my post on the gabaldegook thread for more details. If you really want to earn money at it and save, you can do but you would have to work a lot of lessons (that's a mild way of putting it) and not get too many negative evaluations. Some people do 10-15 lessons a day (6-10 hours of lessons), which is demanding and not conducive to giving good, quality language instruction. Not that you really have to "teach" learners, just talk to them for 40 minutes at a time, but some people are prepared to do that to make more money.

There's some stuff here about the problems other instructors have had with them, including an instructor being threatened with being forced to change learning studios if she didn't open her schedule at a particular time of the day. The same instructor was also denied having more lessons opened on her schedule (both of which flout company policy).

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2011/12/20/general/gaba-contractor-status-under-fire-from-staff-courts/

The Let's Japan website also has a forum called "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" with more bad stories about them. On the positive side, plenty of people seem to do alright and make the best of it, and some people do stay on long-term and eventually (after 5-10 years of working for them) can make a ton of money. Some people get promoted: the ISLs earn Y280-300k a month IIRC, and one ISL I knew earned something like a Y900k annual bonus on top. However, some of the horror stories show what MAY happen to you if you mess up, annoy a client, and you have an unscrupulous ISL (Instructor Support Leader) who's prepared to diddle with your schedule and threaten you in order to keep you in line.

Liz refers to a female instructor being sexually harassed and having to put up with lewd, obscene behaviour from a client who sounded mentally-disturbed. GABA dealt with that situation like any other eikaiwa probably would: they expected an instructor to simply carry on teaching a disturbed client who was masturbating in front of them in the lesson booth, just so that the company didn't lose a single yen. This is exactly what I was saying about Interac too on "Japan's English teaching companies are corrupt" thread: your rights, personal feelings or situation don't enter into it - all they care about is making money, or not losing any money, even if you get dumped on or humiliated in the process. The instructor is always wrong.

Anyway, even if it weren't for all that (!), personally, I wouldn't recommend it to someone wanting to come over to Japan anyway. If you want to work in eikaiwa, I'd at least go for a job that gives you a regular, fixed salary each month, like Aeon or ECC. All these places have very dodgy working practices anyway (that's a mild way of putting it), so you'll probably be better off with the stability of a fixed income if nothing else.

[MotherF]

Thanks Lamarr!

I found that thread, http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=102006&highlight=gaba

it was very helpful.

[Rooster.]

People might not agree with me, but I say apply for Gaba to get into Japan. As I've said before, it's much more difficult from outside of Japan.

[jesso92]

Does anybody have any tips on nailing Gaba's interview process? Or does anybody know a blog or something where this is addressed?

[Rooster.]

This goes for every interview, but if they ask if you can do something/are okay with something always say yes. If you have tattoos, but they are not visible and they ask say no.

[Shakey]

[jesso92]

[rxk22]

[jesso92]