Job Discussion Forums

TokyoLiz · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 1548 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Angela Jeffs in the Japan Times responds to a reader who was victim to a company that fails to pay employees their last pay check. The company takes advantage of those leaving at the end of their visa and contract period by withholding the pay until the former employee goes home.

In her response, she provides contacts to various government agencies and union reps that can help out in labour disputes.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100518aj.html

I'd like to add that, if you want Or need to stay beyond your contract and work visa, you can simply go to immigration and apply for a tourist visa which starts immediately after your employment visa finishes.

razorhideki · Joined: 19 Jan 2010 Posts: 78

Just goes to show how Korea(which richly deserves its bad reputation for scumbag employers, I might add)isn't the only place in E. Asia for gangster employers.

Liz: I see your last point, but suppose the poor just-finished-my-contract teacher schmuck is broke & just wants to go home? Should he or she wait around in Japan for a month, at their expense(!), just to make sure they get their last paycheck!?

PS Why isn't this employer named?

Samurai · Joined: 12 Apr 2004 Posts: 57 Location: Japan

PS Why isn't this employer named?

JALSS... Laughing

Without doubt the worst dispatch company in Japan.

TokyoLiz · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 1548 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Samurai,

I added that about the employment to tourist visa change because I've met so many addled people leaving Japan in a panic, often dealing with employment and apartment disputes, and heaped with all kinds of pressures. They simply didn't know they could extend and leisurely leave Japan after tidying up and touring a little.

If you see the www.letsjapan.org site, Shawn cites the article in JT and names the offending company.

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

The employer is not named in the article probably because of fear of libel by the newspaper (despite the JT's motto of "Without fear or fervor").

BTW, there is no "tourist visa" for most people. It is just a tourist status.

Aside from changing to that, one could also change to a Temporary Visitor Visa, which is good for 15 or 90 days.

TokyoLiz · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 1548 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Glenski said

starteacher · Joined: 25 Feb 2009 Posts: 237

genesis315 · Joined: 30 Mar 2010 Posts: 116 Location: Japan

Third that!

fujisan · Joined: 24 Jun 2010 Posts: 42

fujisan · Joined: 24 Jun 2010 Posts: 42

SaganWasHere · Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 9:53 pm Post subject:

OneJoelFifty · Joined: 06 Oct 2009 Posts: 463

fujisan · Joined: 24 Jun 2010 Posts: 42

There's information on the JALSS lawsuit here:

http://tokyogeneralunion.org/2010/06/22/tozen-alts-sue-for-unpaid-wages/

In total their suing for almost 5,000,000 yen.

Okonomiyaki · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 10:43 am Post subject: Not the worst case I've heard of

JALSS sounds bad, but they're not the worst offender in this category.

The boobie prize would have to go to a large Eikaiwa in Hiroshima. I'm sorry, I don't remember whether its name was "LANG" or "ART LINGUAL". Both schools exist, but the haze of 4 intervening years has made me forget which of these schools was the offender, and which is simply an ordinary large Eikaiwa.

That school, despite financing the construction of a brand new multi-storey building for itself, routinely held back months worth of salary to all its foreign employees. Employees were fed lines like "we already deposited it", "the check is in the mail", and so on... but earned wages were held back for weeks and months. Employees who quit in frustration and protest were simply never given their back pay.

Last time I checked (4 years ago), a dozen of their teachers were hammering at Hiroshima's immigration office, to revoke the school's ability to hire foreigners. They may also have been hoping to create a class-action lawsuit (?), though that's far, far harder to do as foreigners in Japan than we're used to in our home countries.

I see both schools advertising on the Internet, and their ads sound...good! This is so scary to me, because I know that one of these schools is a snakepit, pulling in victims and shooting their emaciated corpses out the back door.

I really do wish that as potential employees, we had the same reasonable expectation of receiving a SCHOOL'S resume, complete with police clearance and references from former employees.