■A make or break year
Only time will tell whether successes like these can halt Big Eikaiwa’s rush to the bottom, and teachers’ dash for the exits. A General Union online survey of instructors taken last year makes grim reading. Many cited a reduction in wages or hours over the past five years and few respondents expressed optimism about the future. A majority felt they had little job security and that their living standards had not improved ― or had deteriorated ― since 2010.
Some are taking jobs only to leave within months, teachers report. ALT dispatcher Interac reduces pay in quiet months, or offers two contracts a year to avoid paying teachers during the main holiday periods; the lack of job security leads to a high turnover, and Interac is forced to keep hiring year-round.
Nick, who works as head teacher at a small Japanese-run school in Sendai, says he is finding it hard to hire. “They’re not coming to Japan, they won’t work in eikaiwa, they don’t want to work in Sendai, and they are staying away from our school because at every point they look at it and it doesn’t pay enough,” he says.
Even when it does pay enough, job security can be hard to find. Recent labor regulations stipulate that after five years, temporary and contract workers must be offered permanent positions if they request them. For some education providers determined to keep their foreign teachers at arm’s length, the solution is to dismiss them well before they reach this point. The General Union has reported that Otemon Gakuin High School is currently trying to nonrenew its entire faculty of foreign teachers, in order to avoid this responsibility. A part-time teachers’ union also took Waseda University to task over a plan to limit teacher contracts to five years, and the university was forced to back down.
It is baffling that institutions that pride themselves on quality education should be willing to suffer the loss of so much experience and goodwill. Surely these organizations are only shooting themselves in the foot. Among the customer complaints Nova faced during its implosion were those concerning the quality of the teachers. If Big Eikaiwa has decided its teachers ― the core providers of its service ― aren’t worth much, then teachers, for their part, will come to the same conclusion about their employers and won’t put in the effort.
With government calls to raise private-sector wages, increased media attention toward “black companies,” union pressure to improve compensation and a dwindling pool of capable people willing to work in the industry, or to stay, a turnaround could finally be in sight in 2016. But if the industry doesn’t improve upon the dreadful conditions it has conspired to create, it might just go down with the teachers on whose backs it has hitched a free ride for far too long.
Views expressed are the author’s alone. In cases where first names only are used, these are pseudonyms. Craig Currie-Robson has taught English in New Zealand, Japan and Hong Kong for well over a decade. He is the author of “English to Go: Inside Japan’s Teaching Sweatshops,” available on Amazon Kindle and Print on Demand. Your comments and story ideas: community@japantimes.co.jp
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