Job Discussion Forums

[ginjoshu]

I don't know if it's true, yet, heard companies get a tax write off for employee transportation costs. Has anyone else heard of this?

[Weezer]

[seklarwia]

Weezer,

I hope you are looking up some back up jobs.

It's good that your school is willing to look into the situation. But if it turns out that RCS is deceiving the BOE and the poop hits the fan resulting in RCS being dropped from your area, is the BOE willing to keep you on as a direct hire or will they have so places to fill that they find it more convenient to switch to another dispatch company leaving you jobless?

It sounds as though you have a good relationship with the staff at your school, which is great. But you should still be prepared for the worst because at the end of the day, it's not your VP who will make the final decision on your fate and most dispatch ALTs have little or no chance to leave a lasting good impression on their BOE.

I hope it works out for you.
Let us know what your VP says.

[Nagoyaguy]

If you really want the details, just go to your local city hall and ask to see the business contract between the city government and RCS. All such contracts are public documents, and are available to anyone who wants to see them. Just file a "freedom of information" request with the reception area (sorry, I forgot the Japanese for that) and it's yours. The only cost is perhaps the cost of photocopying the pages.

I did that in a couple of towns here and was amazed at the amount the citys are paying. One place was paying more than 5 million yen per ALT per year to the dispatcher. Another (had a contract with Japan's largest dispatcher), paid less than 4 million.

[fluffyhamster]

If those figures are true (and I have no reason to doubt that they are, Nagoyaguy!), you'd think that somebody in the Japanese community would've got wind of the nasty niff by now and be seriously campaigning about the waste of money (and it is a waste/bad value, to be paying the dispatchers at least two to two-and-a-half times as much as each AET actually receives, because that cannot but ultimately affect the AET's ability to stay financially afloat in Japan and doing the job they were hired for). I mean, 5 million to the dispatcher per AET is probably about as much as JET cost (but at least on JET the AET would get most of that money/benefits). Then again, there may be many Japanese who would be quite understanding of and not totally unsympathetic to the idea of keeping the foreign labor at arm's length and on indirect, and therefore at most year-long, contracts no matter what the eventual costs/value-for-money of all that might be. And let's not forget that the dispatchers employ non-AETs also (who are often Japanese), thus helping to "spread the wealth" even more! (What, even more thinly?! ).

[fujisan]

[Weezer]

[yamanote senbei]

Reimbursement for travel expenses to and from work isn't required by law, but it's an extremely rare exception not to be paid for it.