Job Discussion Forums

[The Dog Ate My Keitai]

Recently, my wife and I have had many a conversation about the outsourcing situation in Japan, and how this affects longer-term foreign residents in terms of job security, financial stability and work conditions. As you may already know, my wife is a typical victim of contract non-renewal (because the boss is replacing her with a friend) so she have been searching high and low for alternative employment.

The main frustration is approaching a Board of Education, only to be thanked for your interest but politely turned away because they have contracted out to a local eikaiwa, or even worse yet, Interac. Seemingly, this is an increasing trend, rather than the inverse, despite Monbusho's own urgings for school boards not to outsource and the negative consequences of such outsourcing, both in the quality of education received by the students and in the work conditions for the teacher.

The February 9th edition of the Daily Yomiuri ran a "Letter to the Editor" regarding 89 foreign teachers in Kanazawa losing their jobs due to outsourcing, and the author outlined a few reasons why he felt that hiring teachers directly was advantageous over outsourcing. Unfortunately, his reasons were a little weak.

My wife, (I admire her optimism, however unrealistic I think it may be) feels that she shouldn't take this kind of BS lying down, or least without some kind of fight. She feels that the entire English teaching community is just too passive, unwilling and reluctant to engage in combatting outsourcing directly and that too many people just accept it without even putting up a fight. Fair enough... I respect her opinion, even though I am much more pessimistic myself (perhaps being a little too jaded from hanging out on teaching forums too long)... But I am willing to support her if she wants to take on "the system" and doesn't want to let "da man" bring her down.

Her plan at the moment, is to approach the BoEs where she's been to apply for work and been told they are serviced by outsourcing companies and write them a letter, urging them to review their hiring practices, perhaps in the hopes of (someday, eventually) working for them directly. Such a letter would, ideally, outline the advantages in hiring her directly versus the disadvantages of going through a 3rd party company.

If she were to write such a letter, what do you think would be good reasons to include, that may actually stand a chance to get considered by someone, rather than taking the express flight into the first paper shredder or mikusu pay-pah bin?

I'm hoping for something a little more compelling than the Yomiuri letter. (An example reason from the Feb. 9 letter: "Outsourcing will break the harmony of our present team-teaching relationship because we will not be under the direct control of our local schools.")

Just as a forewarning, I do realize that the chances of such a letter writing campaign are next to zero, so please don't feel compelled to remind me of that... But at the same time unless every measure is taken and every angle is tried, it's probably not a fair assessment to say, "there's nothing you can do. That's just the way things are in Japan."

[Willy_In_Japan]

[The Dog Ate My Keitai]

Umm, no... I'm not quite sure how you got that from my post, but what I was trying to say, is that if you are going to work for a public school, there's usually one of 3 situations: i. work directly for the BoE, ii. be dispatched by a 3rd party company (whether it be a local eikaiwa or juku or Interac) or iii. be on the JET program.

Since option iii. is out of the question, and option ii. is the crappiest of the three (and usually illegal to boot), pursuing option i. is the ultimate goal: to get a job working directly for the board of ed.

[pnksweater]

OP- a lot of English Teachers in Japan are rather apathetic because they're not in it for the long run and they don't know a thing about Japanese laws. I've worked in crappy places before and watched my employer screw coworker after coworker out of pay because of clauses in the contract that are not legal under Japanese labour laws. I was the first person to get legal help and force our employer to pay up. There's a lot of "don't rock the boat" syndrome here. I'm not sure if people just aren't comfortable taking on someone in a foreign culture/language/country, or if they just don't care as long as they're making enough cash to pay for their next trip to Thailand. Either way, many of them move on in a year or two, so it doesn't matter to them that they're lowering the average wage for foreign English teachers, or destroying the job security of our profession by working for disreputable dispatch companies.

As for good examples... highering direct leads to better relationships and communication with ALTs. Better communication means higher achievement of learning goals and a more funcitonal and co-operative learning and work environment. An ALT that works for the school has a vested interest in helping students achieve.

Most universities higher English professors on a one year contract, renewable up to two times. While my university's five year limit is far from ideal, this longer contract period has lead to unique course develpoment, in house placement testing, pulications, seminars, and all sorts of other stuff that is benificial to the university, the teachers and, most importantly, the students.

What I'm getting to, I guess, is that stability is a good thing for everyone. Dispatch companies do not foster stability while direct hiring does.

Is this the sort of thing you were looking for?

[Willy_In_Japan]

[kitano]

I think the letter is a good idea but don`t hold your breath. The people at the BOE are the problem, it is very unlikely they will pay attention. If you sent letters to the local newspaper etc in Japanese and maybe appealed to the Japanese teachers union that seems more likely to succeed. But really one or two people are unlikely to make a dent in the problem, pursuing this through a larger group like the GU over time might make an impact. I think the public and the parents need to be convinced and then they will pressure the BOEs.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

[The Dog Ate My Keitai]

Thx for the replies so far....

Willy: Sorry I couldn't explain it any better.... But just to clarify, I think that outsourcing to NOVA OR any eikaiwa is equally crappy. It's ALL inchiki shoubai (monkey business) no matter how you slice the pie.

pnk: yeah, that's kinda what I was aiming at. Thanks.

Gambate: My wife is an experienced, published journalist who used to work for a major Canadian daily newspaper. She also used to teach special needs (adults). I'll tell her to work on that angle...

Everyone else: Yup. I know a letter's a long shot... But who knows? You may end up with a sympathetic ear somewhere? In any event, the letter will not be in English, but in Japanese... (As has been all my wife's correspndence thus far -- CV, cover letters, references, etc).

[PAULH]

For anyone who is interested, I am a member of PALEwhich is a JALT SIG group concerned with management and leadership issues in ELT and language teaching. PALE stands for Professionalism,Administration Leadership in Education. At the moment they are trying to get JALT more involved in supporting teachers, protecting jobs and the labor rights of teachers rather than simply a forum for sharing teaching ideas and doing presentations. Some in JALT are resistant to becoming an added arm to labor unions, however.

They are also trying to tie up with the labor unions in this respect to provide more or a united front and see if they can help teachers who are in trouble over dispatch issues and see about protecting the interests of teachers not just in universities but in conversation schools and high schools.

Im not sure if this is the right forum but some of the PALE people have expressed interest in the kanagawa BOE issue and would like to contact people who are affected by it. You can PM me and i can put you in touch with PALE. You dont need to join JALT to subscribe to PALE postings (they have an online mailing list) but networking and sharing ideas may be a good idea.

[Willy_In_Japan]

[Glenski]

Going through dispatch agencies and the BOE sounds like your wife is only interested in working for public schools. Does she have anything against working for PRIVATE ones?

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

[The Dog Ate My Keitai]

Paul, I do not live in Kanagawa, but I AM interested in PALE... I've read some of their literature in the past. Perhaps when I get a moment I'll send you a PM in regards to that.

Gambatte: Thanks! You read between my lines.... That's pretty much exactly what I WANTED to say. And your assumption is correct -- it bothers me more when Interac scoops up a contract than a local eikaiwa. Why? Because I know of several local eikaiwas that have public school contracts whose working conditions and contracts are actually pretty good (and the eikaiwas themselves have respectable reputations). But the Walmart/Barnes & Noble/etc theory idn't a bad one either. Maybe in some way, even subliminally it bothers me in that sense too.

Glenski: Yeah.... Private.. Hm. That's a whole other ballgame too isn't it? We're definitely working on that angle. But there's a few strikes against us already. For starters, the prefecture where I live has NO international schools or special schools (or at least not yet). There's ONE private school which is up to it's neck in union troubles (labour disputes with the regular, Japanese staff, let alone any foreign staff), as well as being notorious for teachers leaving due to low pay and nasty political issues... Then there's another school who said that there MAY be something in the DISTANT future, but only part-time.... And yet another private school "chain" (elementary-to-university) is still a big mystery -- we're currently working on it. Aside from that, I don't know of any others, but will keep checking. Nevertheless, thanks for suggesting that, Glenski. It's certainly another way to get a 9-5 job -- something that's important to us, so that her schedule roughly matches my own.

BTW, we ARE going to the March 5th rally for workers' rights in Tokyo.... If anyone else plans to be there for that, plz PM me. Would love to meet up with you!

[Glenski]