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Nova Bashing
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wangtesol



Joined: 24 May 2005
Posts: 280

PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2006 7:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:

You could look at it either way: they're a sly, sneaky, malicious corporation, OR they're just doing things that make good business sense.


In the US, do you put up with companies that do not enrol you into mandatory health insurance? Are some of these companies employing 5000 employees all of whom are not enrolled?

It is not about being sly, it is about blatantly illegal activity that affects people's health!

And obviously it is not good business sense for Nova to cheat employees on shakai hoken BECAUSE their bank then dropped them as a client and their stock has lost about 50% of its value since then.

Although the bottom line of a corporation is to raise its stock price, they are expected to uphold the law while they conduct business. You will not find a corporate lawyer who advocates breaking the law. But of course they do, and so you see Enron being the symbol of all that is wrong with corporations being in the courts. How many charges of fraud against Enron's CEOs? 27 or something?

By the way, Dave's ESL Cafe is also being sued for fraud or some such thing by a person who responded to one the ads for a job in Korea but when he got there there was no job for him.
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canuck



Joined: 11 May 2003
Posts: 1921
Location: Japan

PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2006 9:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

wangtesol wrote:
By the way, Dave's ESL Cafe is also being sued for fraud or some such thing by a person who responded to one the ads for a job in Korea but when he got there there was no job for him.


I would like to read more about this. Do you have any links?
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cornishmuppet



Joined: 27 Mar 2004
Posts: 642
Location: Nagano, Japan

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 12:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
By the way, Dave's ESL Cafe is also being sued for fraud or some such thing by a person who responded to one the ads for a job in Korea but when he got there there was no job for him.


Really? Just goes to show. Money talks. Thats pretty much how I`ve found the whole private English teaching world so far, but I`m in it for the travel experience and what cash I can pick up along the way.

On the Nova thing I agree with the OP really. I know some people in my city who hate it and some people who love it. And on the health insurance thing, IMHO, who cares? I have government insurance which I sorted out myself and costs me about 1300yen a month. I now work for a Board of Ed and have been told that they are enrolling me in the national scheme. As far as I`m concerned its just more money out of my pay cheque when I get 70% off any health bills anyway. I`m only on a 3 month contract (though hope to renew) so am not really concerned about pensions and all that. If you are in this game for life, though, I can understand why you are concerned and I can appreciate that if its against the law its against the law and shouldn`t be done. But then neither of my previous companies enrolled me on the social insurance either.

It seems to me that whenever someone mentions Nova or Interac some wise individiual starts jumping up and down and shouting about how the company is scum because they don`t enroll you on the insurance scheme. Come on, you can do way better than that, surely. I`m way more concerned with things like Nova`s policy that states you mustn`t socialise with your students, which is basically wrong and against human rights. Then again, most of the Nova teachers I know just do it anyway, and good for them.
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shuize



Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1270

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 1:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

After all I've read on these boards about NOVA not enrolling employees in the health care system, I have to ask: If they're supposedly breaking the law, why hasn't anyone sued them over it? If they're not breaking the law, what the hell's the problem?
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Luna Chica



Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 177
Location: Trujillo, Peru

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Like cornish muppet said, since I am healthy and was only staying in japan temporarily I didn't care about the health fund. I only had to use the JMA a couple of times and got nearly all my money back from the consultations and costs incurred. I can see that if you are there long term you would be unhappy but then how many people stay at NOVA long term anyway?

The girl who had problems with kids and ATs, I am sorry to hear that you did not get support from the Japanese staff with the kids. That is a problem you should probably have taken up with your At or AAM, they would have been able to give you advice and the AAmM would certainly have been able to speak tot he Japanese staff.

The At sounds like kind of a beyyartch, but you find plenty of them in every organisation.

Glad to hear you are happy where you are now.

My point guys is that NOVA is a great starting point when you get to Japan. If you start to get serious about your teaching you would be better off moving to a smaller school, but you should use NOVA for all the training you can get out of them before that because smaller school won't have those facilities. Once you are settled you should also look at moving into different accomodation.

Can we please make a pact not to bitch about them for the sake of sounding superior, because you merely sound like you have jumped on the "I'm a Japan expert and I am so much better than everyone and insecure and just rabbiting what I have heard other Japan veterans saying, so I am saying it too because I am too scared not to say it and sound like I am not a Japan expert expat" bandwagon.
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Apsara



Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 2142
Location: Tokyo, Japan

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been here 8 years and have never been enrolled in the national health insurance. I onle recently heard- probably on this site actually, that's it's mandatory. If it's illegal not to be enrolled, they don't seem to be too worried about it at my kuyakusho, where presumably it's not too hard for them to find out that I'm not enrolled.

The tax office, where I went to do my tax return the other day, also didn't seem too concerned when I told them I didn't have national health insurance- they calculated my rebate based on my receipts for the private health insurance (not JMA) that I have.

Who is it that's going to bust me for not being enrolled in the national health insurance? I hope it doesn't catch up with me one day...
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Luna Chica



Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 177
Location: Trujillo, Peru

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

haha maybe like unpaid city tax? does anyone actually pay that? I know people who have lived in japan for 10 years and never paid a cent of their city tax
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Apsara



Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 2142
Location: Tokyo, Japan

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I pay my city tax promptly because I plan to be here long term (my husband's Japanese,) and I hate seeing the penalty fees start to add up in the bills they send if you don't pay- I left Japan in 2001 planning not to return, but was back in 7 months Rolling Eyes and once I had changed my gaijin card at the city office the bills for the time I had been away started arriving.

The health insurance is different to me because no authority in Japan has ever told me that I have to have it, and I do have insurance, just not that one. I hate the public health system here and always go to private clinics with English speaking doctors and dentists who often don't accept Japanese national health insurance anyway.
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cornishmuppet



Joined: 27 Mar 2004
Posts: 642
Location: Nagano, Japan

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Re the city tax, apparently I`m supposed to be paying it now I`ve been here over a year, but I`ve heard nothing from the tax people about it. But then no one`s delivered me any new gomi tickets yet! No gomi tickets, no tax! Cool

And to the person who had trouble with kids, seems to be a money-school thing. I had a nine year old girl in my old school in a group of four, who at best did nothing other than read her comic book, at worst she went out of her way to disrupt the rest of the class. And of course that ruined it, because none of the students were going to take the teachers side. And of course, the school didn`t want to know. By the time I left I`d not even seen her text book in six months because she refused to ever take it out of her bag. At least she never hit me, though one girl stabbed me in the hand with a pen. 16 years old. And the school`s response? Rolling Eyes
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Sweetsee



Joined: 11 Jun 2004
Posts: 2302
Location: ) is everything

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Darkmagus wrote:
"As long as no one gets hurt, it works quite well."


Is it true that NOVA is gobbling up ALT contracts and McDonifying the schools while taking the food out of my children's mouths?


Last edited by Sweetsee on Wed Apr 19, 2006 5:32 pm; edited 1 time in total
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DarkMagus



Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, NH

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

wangtesol wrote:
Quote:

You could look at it either way: they're a sly, sneaky, malicious corporation, OR they're just doing things that make good business sense.


In the US, do you put up with companies that do not enrol you into mandatory health insurance? Are some of these companies employing 5000 employees all of whom are not enrolled?

It is not about being sly, it is about blatantly illegal activity that affects people's health!

And obviously it is not good business sense for Nova to cheat employees on shakai hoken BECAUSE their bank then dropped them as a client and their stock has lost about 50% of its value since then.

Although the bottom line of a corporation is to raise its stock price, they are expected to uphold the law while they conduct business. You will not find a corporate lawyer who advocates breaking the law. But of course they do, and so you see Enron being the symbol of all that is wrong with corporations being in the courts. How many charges of fraud against Enron's CEOs? 27 or something?

By the way, Dave's ESL Cafe is also being sued for fraud or some such thing by a person who responded to one the ads for a job in Korea but when he got there there was no job for him.


In the US, we don't have mandatory health insurance. Many workers are still uninsured, and unable to even afford insurance based on their (low) wages. Maybe you could spend some of your energy fighting for that cause?

I'm failing to see any sort of moral "infraction" being committed by Nova, with respect to their insurance plan (JMA). Perhaps I don't fully understand the situation. And I'm not clear on exactly how Nova is breaking the law. I certainly couldn't advocate that. But its very hard for me to believe that a company that is as large and as visible as Nova (being such a large corporation) could continually break the law and have that go unnoticed. Perhaps you could provide specific facts with references to show that this is the case.

And how do these (so-called) "blatant illegal activities" directly affect people's health? To suggest that Nova's (supposedly) illegal activities directly affects an individual's health is just hideously bad reasoning--a total fallacy. Maybe you could provide a specific case of someone's health being compromised by actions directly tied to Nova?

And what does Enron have to do with any of this? If we're talking about Nova, how can Enron (and the activities of any corporation in general have anything at all to do with Nova? Sure, they're all corporations, they do have that in common, but that's a really poor generalization that doesn't actually prove or show anything at all. And besides that, you didn't even attempt to make any sort of point at all with your reference to Enron.

And after all that, you mention that Dave's ESL cafe is being sued! You totally lost me there.

With all due respect, that's some terrible, terrible logic. If you could provide specific facts, with references to back them up, and put it all together in a coherent argument, that'd be helpful to all of us.
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ndorfn



Joined: 15 Mar 2005
Posts: 126

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yep, nova do suck, but at least their expecations are low, unlike most other jobs I've had since. you're not expected to speak japanese, plan lessons, come in early, stay late.

the problem arises when people (myself included) let their own expectations rise too high.

like the students there, the teachers are inexperienced, and are happy with the convenience of a one stop shop company.
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shuize



Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1270

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
It is not about being sly, it is about blatantly illegal activity that affects people's health!

As mentioned above, where's the evidence that NOVA is doing anything illegal? If it is illegal, why isn't anyone taking them to court over it? If it's not illegal, what's the problem? -- Other than people just wanting to cry about corporations, I mean.

For everyone who can't go a day without griping about the "evil" corporate world we live in, I'd really like to see you honestly live up to your own anti-corporation rhetoric and refuse to use any goods or services offered by corporations. It'd be interesting to see how long you'd last.
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wangtesol



Joined: 24 May 2005
Posts: 280

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 5:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are you pulling my leg?
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DarkMagus



Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, NH

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 5:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

No, we really want the evidence. A random person posting things on the internet isn't really a viable source of information.
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