Job Discussion Forums

[SA_Massive]

I live in Kansai and pretty happy working in the Eikaiwa field. However, at some stage I would like to change jobs and become and Elementary School ALT, mainly because of daytime working hours, possibly more challenge, freedom and responsibility.

I've noticed that there has been a huge number of job postings by W5 and Interac recently. The positions start in September 2 and run until around Febuary- March.

Just W5 alone , must have atleast 30 positions they are currently trying to fill.

Does this strike anyone else as strange? On one hand it seems like a great opportunity to get an ALT position, but on the other hand, I find it unusual that they are hiring at such late notice - 2 weeks to interview, train and do adminisatration stuff. It sounds a bit unorganised to me.

Anyway, I would just like to ask someones advice whether they think these companies can be trusted (If they won so many ALT contracts at such notice, they might lose them at short notice too?)

I would certainly prefer an ALT job, but maybe waiting until the main hiring season (When I will also have a fresh visa) and more employment options is a good idea, rather than make a rash decision which I may regret.

Also I would rather give my employer much more than 1-2 weeks notice.


There must be a few of you who have been in the same position?
If anyone has any thoughts or advice, Thank you!

SA

[rai]

One of the biggest headaches working for dispatch companies is that they have to bid for contracts. Often the city doesn't decide on which company to go with until distressingly close to the start of the contract. Hence the short notice and hiring window. This is indeed one of the hiring windows for ALT's; September is the start of nigaki, or the second tri-mester in the public schools. The biggest hiring window is before the school year starts in April. Unfortunately, the better jobs (like mine, I work directly for a school board) start hiring much earlier, sometimes in January or February.

Dispatch companies can be a pain, but it gets you experience in the public schools. I started off with a dispatch company 4 years ago, and now I have a great job (well, great except for the first tri-mester when I was at a bad school). Oh, and training? There usually isn't much of that It sounds like these jobs run through the second and third trimesters, which would take you up until next school year, at which time you will have some experience teaching in the public schools. Sounds good to me...

Um, either that or they lost a LOT of teachers after the first tri-mester. Don't know the companies very well. I'd still use them for the resume building; hell it's only Sept-Mar, right?

[Revenant]

w5 has been discussed on here and other sites like GPot. They have an extremely high hire turnover rate.

[wangtesol]

Yes, W5 and other ALT outsourcing companies are very disorganized since boards of education decide which company will be chosen at the last moment. Recently, there has been a trend to get contracts for ALTs to start in April, so ALT contracts that have started in September have been terminated with little notice in February or March so the teacher is left high and dry.

In one case, RCS lost 10 contracts in Honjo, Saitama to Shane language school in April 2004. That meant that 10 RCS teachers who had worked at their jobs for 8 months suddenly lost their jobs since RCS had lost the bids for the contracts to Shane. It is very possible that you could be facing a similar situation.

Underlying all this disorganization is the fact that most ALT positions are illegal. That is, the outsourcing company signs an illegal gyomu itaku contract with the board of education in the attempts to avoid the regulations of Dispatch Law (haken kaisha ho). The Japanese Ministry of Education issued a notice in February 2005 to all prefectural boards of education to have this practice stopped since it also violates Education Law section 28 where it states that the principal must be in charge of all staff including the ALT. However, in the gyomu itaku practice, the company is in charge of you, not the principal.

You can read more and see how the migrant worker unions are fighting this illegal system at www.nambufwc.org. There is also a "sticky" in this forum on this very subject.

I would hold off until April if you can or join a union, know your rights and fight them. ALT companies are very vulnerable to union fights. I do not know of one ALT case that has been lost in the last year. Don't join the union at the last moment though, since often there is a 3 month backlog on cases.

[6810]

SA - The high number of positions is not unusual. I think summer generally sees people with more time up their sleeves to re-evaluate their positions and jump ship, move on or do something else.

[SA_Massive]

Thanks for your advice.

I guess 'the grass is always greener'' but I've decided to stick with Eikaiwa for a while,

I will keep my eyes open during the main hiring season.

Until then, its 'listen and repeat: a homemaker, a bank clerk .....'

[PAULH]

[Sage]

Yeah well I await information on how to get an ALT job if you don't speek fluid Japanese, know someone who knows someone, or have the time to travel around Japan going from BoE to BoE to look for work directly.

Otherwise it looks like the only way to work in Japan and not be a ekaiwa robot slave is to go dispatch like Interac or the like. Yeah there might be a bunch of downsides with dispatch but can anyone tell me there aren't a bunch of downsides to ekaiwa work?

~Sage

[Glenski]

[6810]

[rai]

[canuck]

[rai]

[Glenski]

[wangtesol]

It has been my experience with smaller ALT companies, namely TRILS and RCS, that they just don't know what labor law says. When I took these two companies to the Labor Standards Office (rodo kijun kantokusho) they were found guilty of violating several labor laws including not having work rules (shugyo kisoku). Then, when they were forced to write work rules, RCS wrote some nonsense akin to promotional material and TRILS wrote something with which to further harass its workers.

At TRILS, the owners had a right-hand man who sucked ass and ratted out his fellow employees in exchange for job security and favourable treatement. But this kind of behaviour just makes work conditions worse for everyone. It is a common practice though. So, we formed a branch union under NUGW Tokyo South [url]www.nambufwc.org [/url]. This even helped out the right-hand man and he encouraged us to keep on fighting our employer. He eventually lost 40% of his contracts with the board of education in Fukaya, Saitama.

Of course, in any business those that suck up to management will probably receive some perks. Comparing ALT companies to Nova is just compaing one scofflaw company to another.

Nova is an industry leader though. Even a leader in how migrant workers in general are treated in Japan since they are the largest employer of foreign workers in the country. They are a union busting, health insurance avoiding, and labor law breaking bunch who undermine the stability of jobs for foreign workers with their insistence on using and enforcing short-term contracts.