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Foreign English teachers call for fair treatment
About 40 foreign English teachers urged the government Friday to take steps to eradicate the serious problems they face on the job, including low wages and sudden dismissal. Kazuo Inoue, one of the three DPJ lawmakers present, said Japan needs to immediately improve foreigners’ working conditions and protect their rights. Louis Carlet, a deputy secretary…
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Class action
What would you do if you were sacked for “clicking your pen too much in class,” or for “talking to yourself during your break” . . . or how about for “only eating the topping on your rice during lunch?” These are all actual reasons given for showing English teachers the door, says Louis Carlet,…
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Japan mulls multicultural dawn
Mr Nakatani is worried because Japanese are living longer, yet having fewer children. The result is a shrinking workforce which threatens economic growth. In recognition, the government is thinking of loosening its restrictive immigration policy. But any changes may come as a shock to a nation where registered foreigners make up just over 1% of…
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‘No sex please, you’re teachers’
According to the language school chain’s instructor contract, foreign employees are forbidden to “participate in any interaction with the clients of the employer outside the place of employment.” In theory, insist Nova instructors, they are under threat of the sack for so much as a chance encounter with any of the company’s 450,000 students. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20040601zg.htm
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McEnglish for the masses
“The largest eikaiwa school has a staff turnover of 70 percent a year,” says Dennis Tesolat, vice-chair of the General Union, which represents hundreds of teachers in Japan. “They have guys whose job is it to go to the airports just to pick up new teachers. And that’s because the teachers have a grueling schedule…
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Revised law removes barrier to nationality
The revised Nationality Law cleared the Diet Friday but only after lawmakers at the last minute managed to have a clause inserted to prevent what they claimed would be a surge in bogus paternal recognition cases. The revised law cleared the Upper House with the nonbinding clause, which calls for applicants to submit pictures of…