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Nippon Keidanren backs wage hikes, raises concerns on take-home pay
The country’s most powerful business lobby plans to accept pay raises at high performing companies under a set of management guidelines for the 2008 annual spring labor offensive, sources said. It will be the fourth straight year for Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) to back wage hikes in the spring offensive, known as shunto. In…
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Nippon Keidanren to urge members to offer wage hike
The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) likely will call on employers to offer wage increases in next year’s spring labor offensive as many major companies are raking in record profits, according to a draft position paper obtained by The Yomiuri Shimbun. The country’s most influential business group will urge its about 1,300 member companies to…
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English teachers say sayonara to a not-so-super Nova
TEACHING English in Japan: a working holiday in a truly strange and different country (to those of us not Japanese); getting paid for talking your own language in a classroom; spare time and funds for culture in Kyoto, night-clubbing in Shinjuku, deep powder snow around Nagano. Or whatever. It seems so cool and out-there —…
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Nova faces long road back
With Monday marking one month since English-language school operator Nova Corp. filed for court protection, there is still no prospect of students receiving refunds on tuition fees and many Nova employees have chosen to leave their jobs. G.communication Co., a Nagoya-based language-school operator, has taken over Nova operations and resumed offering lessons at 25 branches…
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Interac in the News
This is an archived post from the old General Union Interac Branch website, written by an undeclared union member (thus the nickname rather than the name): Hi all. Corrector here. Many of you may have seen this before through the original link on Let’s Japan earlier this year, but I wanted to highlight the story…
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Gov’t must think hard about fingerprinting foreigners
Japan has started a new system obligating foreigners entering the country to provide their fingerprints and face photos. The United States started a similar process following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the government has gone along with this, revising the immigration law to make it obligatory for foreigners to take these steps. Data collected…
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Giving you the finger
A controversy over fingerprinting foreigners IN 1641 Japan’s shogunate designated an artificial island in Nagasaki harbour as the only place foreigners could live. Japan has of late been more welcoming to gaijin. Yet this week it began to photograph and take digital fingerprints of all foreigners entering the country?residents as well as tourists and visiting…
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Rally targets Justice Ministry
Dozens of protesters, both foreign and Japanese, gathered outside the Justice Ministry on Tuesday to voice opposition to the new policy of fingerprinting and photographing visitors entering Japan. The biometric screening system was launched Tuesday over the strong objection of foreign residents as well as human rights organizations, including Amnesty International Japan [and NUGW Tokyo…
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Gov’t orders forced fingerprinting of foreigners refusing to give prints at entry ports
The Justice Ministry has instructed regional immigration bureaus to forcibly take fingerprints from foreigners who refuse to be fingerprinted or to leave the country, sources close to the ministry said. The ministry’s Immigration Bureau sent the directive to regional immigration bureaus prior to the introduction of a system on Tuesday, under which all foreigners who…
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Protesters ‘flip the bird’ at Justice Ministry over forced fingerprinting
Protestors inflated a 3-meter-high yellow hand with an extended forefinger and thrust it toward the Justice Ministry’s offices in Tokyo on Tuesday to demonstrate against a controversial fingerprinting policy beginning at ports of entry across the country the same day. About 80 protestors turned toward the ministry building and shouted in unison their opposition to…