Job Discussion Forums

[grace]

Hello everyone. I hope that you're all well. I have a very short question. I just accepted a teaching position and just realised something in my contract which raises my eyebrows. It states that when a holiday falls on a Sunday, there will be no extra day off, and when sliding holidays fall on a Monday, teachers are expected to work. Is this legal? Do teachers have to work on national holidays if they happen to occur on Mondays? Thanks for your responses. Grace

[nakanoalien2]

Hiya,

I'm fine thank you.

Regarding holidays that fall on weekends here's what I know. I am writing generally about companies operating in JP, not from the teacher's/eikawa point of view.

If a holiday falls on a Saturday, and you have weekends off anyway, then there is really no benefit to you. The reason for this is that Saturday is an official workday for many companies. In my case, I have weekends off. Last month one of the Golden Week days was on Saturday, so it was of no particular benefit to me. If you have to work on Saturdays, but you will not get a Saturday national holiday off, I would say that is not good.

On Sundays, the holiday "slides" to Mondays. You should get Monday off. At least that is the situation in Japanese companies in general.

Is this legal? I would love to know, definitively. Far worse than you situation is the NOVA situation which is...no national holidays barring a few days off during New Year. I would say from the practical point of view that it is probably not an issue with the Japanese labor department or courts and you are unlikely to change the situation, but I'd love to know if you find the exact legality of this.

[ryuro]

Thought I might weigh in on this topic as I'm a westerner with about 7 years experience living, teaching and recruiting in Japan.

Here's the definitive scoop- there is NOTHING in the Japanese labor laws (or any of it's laws for that matter) that requires PRIVATE (eikaiwas, etc...) companies to give their employees national holidays off.

It's good to take the hint from NOVA- it's a HUGE for business only corporation and being such is WELL-VERSED in what it is allowed and not allowed to do (whether they honor this is another story). They give the MINIMUM number of holidays required by the the government (for fulltime employees)- ten per year plus one more per year for each additional year of employment after the first year of fulltime employment.

So that's the definitive deal on national holidays- for better or worse companies are well within their rights to stay open and request their employees to work these days with no 'special' compensation (so long as it dosn't exceed the gov. mandated maximum weekly working hours).

Although most places have some mercy on their teachers and let them off- most these days do not. GEOS used to honor national holidays (may still) but a few years ago they started moving all their fulltime teachers to Sunday-Monday off schedules (I'g guess about 95% of GEOS teachers work Tu-Sat.) making the Monday national holidays a mute point for them.

Basically your days off are your days off- period (regardless of where the national holidays fall). Anything else your company gives you is gravy.

Probably not what you wanted to hear, but unfortunately the truth and in these hard economic times, more and more schools are trying to squeeze more from their teachers/staff.

Good luck,

ryuro