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[PAULH]

The Business President Turns to Dispatch Teachers: A Follow Up on the Otemae EWA Case


By Rube Redfield

I have a masters degree in Foreign Language Education. I speak five languages, including English as my native language and fluent Japanese. I have taught EFL in America, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. I have numerous publications and presentations. I am a member of a number of scholarly associations. I attend their conferences and read their publications. I have been active in our field since 1973. I even appear regularly on TV, giving me a bit of star power. I averaged ?27,000 per koma when I taught part time at Otemae Junior College. I was replaced by contract teachers from ECC.

When Otemae changed college presidents, with Mrs. Fukui, daughter of the founder (aka 'the baba-cho') passing the torch to her oldest son, nicked-name 'Peter', my days were numbered. The mother, decorated by the Emperor himself, was known as the academic president. Peter, with an MBA from Southern Cal, wanted to be known as the business president. He brought in consultants, slashed costs, put his ex-stewardess wife (aka 'ANA-baba') in as office boss, and replaced the English teachers with jobbers from ECC. You can read all about our union struggles with Otemae in a previous PALE volume (Redfield, 2002). What I want to do in this brief article, is to show how the business decision to replace professional EFL practitioners with dispatch teachers has worked out, not in the classroom, but in the counting room.


But first a brief aside. Yes, we were replaced by dispatch teachers from ECC, for the most part. Mr. K. Ando, brought over from Western Oregon State College (located in a town that bans alcohol), aka Jack, was put in charge of the ESL program at Otemae. The first thing he did after the entertainer Jeff Bergland baled on the college, after going from semmon gakko instructor to full professor with zero academic qualifications with the space of a single year, was to install his Philippine-born wife (aka Charlie) as the resident foreign EFL instructor. Family is always more important that qualifications at Otemae, as you are being to learn. Charlie Ando is also the president of the Charlie Travel Agency, whose only client is apparently Otemae. The travel agency specializes is student trips, organized by the head of the international committee there, Mr. Jack Ando.


Back to the dispatch teachers. They are regular ECC employees. They do not mingle with the others part-timers at Otemae, have their own space and work rules. Their names do not appear anywhere at the school, not in the college guide, the course descriptions, the curriculum, the class schedule, nowhere at all. They are simply referred to collectively as 'ESL'. There have been a number of them passing through Otemae. In general, they are young, inexperienced, and low paid (ECC generally pays in the neighborhood of 240,000 yen per month, for a 29.5 hour week (work 30 hours and the government considers you full-time and therefore entitled to benefits). Almost none of them speak Japanese. In short, your typical off the boat amateur. ECC doesn? even bother to train them much. How could they, since hardly anyone at ECC knows anything about EFL anyway. I should know, I was Head Teacher there once, and still have friends there. Besides, that would cost money and Otemae, with Peter the business president in charge, money is something to be spared. Or is it?

This spring ECC came in with new contract demands. They were asking 18,000 per class taught, which translates into ?36,000 per koma (four koma per month, 26 weeks per year). That is 25% more than I was making. The Ministry of Education had to approve my appointment, looking over all my qualifications described above. ECC is the sole judge of who can teach EFL at Otemae now, with the exception of the Philappina travel agent, Charlie Ando, and they favor shin gaijin who can live at the minimum wage that Immigration will allow. Never mind about quality education, just think about economics. Otemae, under the business president, replaced qualified, dedicated, fully vetted staff, with unqualified jobbers fresh off the boat, all for only 25% more money. What a deal.
The tone of this piece is a bit flippant, but the message is clear. Replacing qualified, resident foreign professionals with unknown, unqualified, transient jobbers, does not save schools money. All I can guess is that it saves schools from having to deal directly with unpredictable non-Japanese. Is that worth paying 25% more for dubious at best education? I guess it must be, or else could it be that ECC is better at business that the business president?

Redfield, M. (2002). The EWA Otemae case. PALE Journal, Volume 8 Number 2 Autumn 2002

[canuck]

Firstly, it's Filipina not Philappina.

I don't understand this. Why wouldn't someone take the time and approach some new agencies etc. about this stuff? There really has to be some media willing to do a story about this. Where was the General Union with all this going on?

[wintersweet]

This guy would probably get his point across better if he adopted a different writing style. I'm always suspicious of people who start off by listing their credentials, and what's with the asides like "a town that bans alcohol," "ex-stewardess," etc.? Who cares? It's not relevant. It's hard to take him seriously, even though the problem seems to be a real one.

[JimDunlop2]

[PAULH]

[sidjameson]

The trouble with posts such as this is that the "truth" gets lost in the translation of one man's view of reality.
I worked for several years at the ECC department that sends teachers to these universities. I would say that for the most part they are fairly well experienced teachers who are better than average at their job. The big point that he chooses not to mention though is that, in my time at least, ECC won the contracts to send teachers to teach conversation classes and to the best of my knowledge, conversational classes to students who weren't english majors. I've taught at universities for ECC to music, math, science, PE and so on students many times but I have never taught as in "taught" a single english class to a single english major.
In every sinlge case I would say that the students were more than happy as well to get a communication class with a younger, fun, energetic "amateur" rather than with their older tenured professor.
Of course I am not advocating the spread of agencies. I just feel, like others, that this guy, who afterall is proud to mention his academic merits has failed to apply an acedemic analysis of the situation.

[JimDunlop2]

Oh, puh-lease... Gimme a break! Do you actually believe for one instant that this has anything to do with the happiness of the students? If you do, please go to the "stock market in Japan" thread to learn about the "slightly damp" Florida real estate I've got for sale.

This has everything to do with cost-cutting and short-sighted departmental budgets.

As far as we know, there is nothing to indicate that Redfield was doing a bad job at the university. As such, there is nothing to warrant dismissing a perfectly good university professor and replacing him with scab labour. This has got nothing to do with ECC... If it weren't ECC providinig the scabs it would be another dispatch company.

If you don't think there's something wrong with this situation (Redfield's writing style aside) read here: http://www.issho.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=237&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Academic apartheid is a genuine problem in this country. Nevermind that, think of how you, (most likely a 4-yr university degree holder) would react if you were suddenly dismissed by your current employer only to find out that your position had been outsourced to a dispatch company that specialized in providing "summer school English teacher" placements to kids that just graduated from high school? It's the same thing.

Yes, Redfield is angry (quite legitimately so, IMO) so he attacks the credibility of the ECC teachers that replaced him... But let's not get distracted from the fact that there are shennanigans going on here that cause people to lose jobs that they fought hard to get and keep.

[PAULH]

I think also you would feel slightly miffed if you were studying at your university back home, doing your undergraduate degree and found that your teacher teaching your class had no more than a BA, probably picked up some courses at night school and actually had no teaching experience. However because you now happen to be the teacher looking for a job and any income you can lay your hands on, teaching English in Japan at a college makes it OK.

Guy might be charismatic and dynamic as a teacher, but basically doesnt know sh-t from clay when it comes to academic knowledge at a university teaching level. Why do you think they make university teachers have Masters and Phds at your university back home? Its simply this attitude that ESL is a soft non-academic subject, you dont need higher degrees and even people from ECC can teach those classes means that teaching here will always be under rated and undervalued.

You get guys here just out of university or one year in to the JET program get a job teaching eikaiwa at ECC and suddenly find themselves teaching undergraduate classes at a university for 10,000 yen a day.

[Mike L.]

Redfiled's post is spot on I figure. He brings up all of the issues but these 2 really cuaght my atention.

1) The nepotism that sees people running monopoly companies dealing with the place they work while they are in managment.

All because you're "Family."

This wouldn't fly elsewhere maybe even in Japan..Tlak about a "conflict of interest."

Businesses run like this tend to fail!

2) The fact that not only are the ECC people inexperienced and unqualifed but that they are being treated like "non-people." Their names, achievments if they make any, rights, etc etc all completely ignored.

This act would seem to defy the meaning of the word "university."

Dissapointing, but not suprising in Japan!

[kitano]

I have to feel for Mr. Redfield. It is a little scary that it is coming to this sort of thing. I think anyone living/teaching here longterm has to think hard. This can happen to anyone. If you put in the time to get better qualified and be a better teacher like Redfield you will still have basically no job security at any highschool, uni etc. An even bigger problem is why should future Mr. Redfields improve and stay or come to Japan if there is no better jobs to aspire to, no matter how hard they work?

However there is a similar trend at western universities with more and more sessional lecturers rather than tenured professors. More than 10 years ago I went to French class at university one September and someone had decided all elementary and intermediate French classes would be taught by graduate students. My teacher couldn't speak comprehensible French or teach worth shit. I transfered right out and up a level so I could get a real prof but I was pissed off! This was doubly shocking since I'm from Canada, how hard can it be to at least find someone who can at least speak French in a country with 7 million plus Francophones.

[PAULH]

Taikibansei and I have dealt with the situation on many levels and though I dont want to wear my heart on my sleeve once more it is depressing to think you go to the trouble of getting higher degrees, developing your skills, and you either become too old too expensive (salaries here are linked to age and experience) and becuase of term contracts you are effectively looking for a new job every two years.

Universities here make you jump through all sorts of hoops to get hired, needing Masters PhDs and publications and then the bean counters decide they need to cut back on expenses and they virtually pick up people off the street and shove the pros out the door as they cost too much. Many like me and Taikibansei also have families and children in school.


Kind of reminds me about the bridal industry with foreign pastors who doing western weddings in Japan. There is a bit of a stink in the industry at the moment as one company I know of in a rush to find western foreigners to conduct wedding ceremonies in Tokyo was undercutting all the other agencies by offering a pastor at half normal rates which the big hotels fell for. the only way they could find enough pastors to fill all the bookings was to literally recruit blonde blue eyed westerners who could barely speak Japanese, give them four days 'training', certify them as ministers and then let them loose on some poor couple getting married. Have just found out one big company in Tokyo that was doing all this is now being investigated for tax evasion.

They may be able to cut costs and provide 'bums' on seats but it comes at a huge cost and a general decline in the quality of service or instruction, whatever.

[JimDunlop2]

[guest of Japan]

Make an exit plan. I've been here about 5 years and the industry has seriously digressed in that time. There are probably more English teachers than ever before, but salaries have been steadily dropping. The standards increase for the lower salary jobs, but the standard salaries have gone the other way.

I have heard that 3 year visas are no longer offered, but I haven't seen any verification of this. Perhaps if this is true the market will become a little more worker friendly. I'm not an expert on the university system, but the incentive is not high enough to go through what people like PaulH and Taikibansei do. At best I could be Dr. guest of Japan until my salary got too big or my face got too many wrinkles.

For there really to be more stability for highly qualified foreigners, western universities would have to threaten to not allow Japanese professors to teach at them. Faced with the same restrictions Japanese universities give, they would quickly change course. Sadly or happily, many western institutions debated this idea and concluded to do so would smack academic idealism in the face. They've taken the high ground and left Japan able to get everything it wants.

On a final note, yes this boils down to money to a certain degree, but replacing real teachers with dispatched teachers doesn't save universities or other schools very much money. They end up paying nearly the same amount to the dispatch company. It's really all about not having to deal with the foreigners.

[Gordon]

[quote="PAULH
Kind of reminds me about the bridal industry with foreign pastors who doing western weddings in Japan. There is a bit of a stink in the industry at the moment as one company I know of in a rush to find western foreigners to conduct wedding ceremonies in Tokyo was undercutting all the other agencies by offering a pastor at half normal rates which the big hotels fell for. the only way they could find enough pastors to fill all the bookings was to literally recruit blonde blue eyed westerners who could barely speak Japanese, give them four days 'training', certify them as ministers and then let them loose on some poor couple getting married. Have just found out one big company in Tokyo that was doing all this is now being investigated for tax evasion.

They may be able to cut costs and provide 'bums' on seats but it comes at a huge cost and a general decline in the quality of service or instruction, whatever.[/quote]

On the other hand, couldn't the same be said about foreigners in general? I'm sure there are many pastors that think the same about foreigners who are not real "ministers" performing weddings. I know there are not enough ministers to go around this country, being only 1% Chrisitian and that many weddings are done on Sundays, but it still seems funny to me that people "do" weddings here who are not Christians.
Other than intermediate Japanese ability, what kind of training do foreign pastors have in Japan?

[JimDunlop2]