Last year, with help from the General Union, one assistant language teacher (ALT) dispatched by Interac to the Tokai city Board of Education in Aichi Prefecture took the National Pension Service to court for the right to be enrolled in the health and pension schemes. The Tokyo District Court ruled that the teacher must be enrolled because he was in fact working more than 29½ hours a week, taking into consideration preparation and other “off-the-clock” time at school. The ruling failed to address the legality or otherwise of the 29½-hour rule, but the GU hopes this precedent will help other teachers working over the threshold based on time spent at the workplace win enrollment.
The big news for 2016 is that for teachers working for large firms ― i.e., those with over 500 employees ― the 29½-hour rule should cease to be an issue from October, when new labor regulations will require these firms to enroll all workers who put in at least 20 hours a week in the shakai hoken program. The law is supposed to be extended to cover all companies at an unspecified later date.
In a move the GU believes is not a coincidence, Interac announced in September that an “absorption-type split agreement” would take effect this month whereby the company (with “around 3,000 employees,” according to its website) would split up into at least six smaller regional firms “to position ourselves to manage the growth in the market,” in the words of the company. The union suspects that because the new law will apply only to companies with over 500 workers, Interac is trying to dodge this bullet by spreading its teachers around these new wholly owned subsidiaries.
■Redefining employment
Meanwhile, other firms, such as Gaba, continue to sidestep the troublesome issues of thresholds and so on altogether by denying that their teachers are staff at all. Making use of itaku, or subcontractor, status ― an increasingly popular tactic among companies within and outside eikaiwa ― Gaba evades all the responsibilities an employer would usually have toward its employees: no sick leave, no pension, no insurance, no paid holidays, no overtime rates.
When an Osaka Labor Commission finding over one dispute carried wording that suggested the teachers were workers according to the Trade Union Law, Gaba appealed to both the district court, which stuck by the original judgment, and then the high court to have the wording removed, but the case was eventually withdrawn as part of a deal reached with the GU.
When Gaba’s owner, Nichii Gakkan, opened a new chain of schools ― the fast-growing Coco Juku ― it wasn’t going to be hostage to the teachers’ union all over again. Instead, it formed its own in-house one, which all teachers are required to join. Japan’s labor laws stipulate that an employer cannot “control or interfere with the formation or management of a labor union.” Perhaps Coco Juku didn’t get the memo.
The only hope a worker has of finding an employer that actually follows labor regulations may be a government job, and there are precious few of those around for foreign nationals. Enforcement in the private sector is universally lax. Worker rights are so shaky in the industry that even union membership can be grounds for dismissal, albeit illegal dismissal.
Though big names such as Berlitz and Nova have come under fire for nonrenewal of union teachers’ contracts in the past, others, such as Peppy Kids Club, Nichibei Eigo Gakuin and Linguaphone, have been ordered to reinstate nonrenewed staff. The Tozen Union was recently embroiled in a high-profile case with Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo over the nonrenewal of seven union members’ contracts, after SIT declared its intention to part ways with all of its foreign English-teaching staff. The SIT union subsequently went on strike, and the case was finally resolved last year with a settlement at the Tokyo Labor Relations Commission. The conditions of the deal are subject to a confidentiality order.
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