Synopsis:
1) Mr Collison is an excellent teacher and has the reviews to prove it.
2) Mr Collison’s wife has a miscarriage.
3) Mr Collison has to take some time off of work to deal with funeral arrangements
4) Mr Collison is fired, Interac claims it is for “performance issues and missing work” (the performance claims are disproven by his excellent reviews).
5) Interac attempts to force Mr Collison to sign resignation papers, going so far as to tell him that he could not leave the office until he signed them (this is horribly illegal).

I really wish that Mr Collison had contacted us when this happened because I can garantee you that this kind of thing will NOT happen to any union member. A strong union can prevent this kind of thing from happening to its members, and can right these kinds of labor issues even after they have begun to go sour, all it takes is the initiative to contact us and the willingness to fight. This is not a criticism of Mr Collison, I certainly cannot imagine the pain he and his family have had to deal with, I just wish we would have had the oppurtunity to try and help. Workers in Japan are all garanteed to have time off for bereavement, and it seems that Interac is unaware of this fact.

A link to the original post:

http://www.debito.org/?p=2993

They told her that in light of her condition, it would be too much trouble for them to find a replacement in the middle of the school term, and had decided to go with someone else who was less…. pregnant.

Needless to say, this was quite upsetting. Everyone with a family knows that having a baby is expensive, and the money lost in this case was going to put a major dent in the savings of the mother to be. Combine this with the stress placed upon her by the entire insulting ordeal, and it is easy to draw the conclusion that Martina faced a risk to the health of herself and her child.

I was in the process of moving from Osaka to Tokyo, and was elected to take care of the case since I would be transferring my membership to the Tokyo FWC.  I was pleasantly surprised that I only had to send one email to rectify the situation:

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 02:24:05 +0900 (JST)

From: “Erich”

Subject: Inquiry concerning Interac Employment

To: northan@interac.co.jp

Hello Joel Norton,

I have a question regarding Martina XXXXXXXX.
Who exactly was it that gave the order to not renew her
contract due to her pregnancy?

I ask this because as a union member, I study quite a bit
of labor law and this is horribly, blatantly illegal (not
to mention morally heinous).

The Tokyo (Nambu) branch of the Interac union will
probably be the branch that takes this case to the Labor
Bureau, but I thought I would ask who gave the order
specifically so that the union members will know who
specifically to name when bringing the case before the
bureau. I was thinking that we should just turn over your
name, but then I realized that you probably have a
supervisor that may have given you the order.

Thanks in advance for your expedient cooperation.
Erich

A declared member of the General Union Interac Branch
(you can call the Osaka Interac office to confirm my
membership in the General Union if you feel the need to do
so.)

PS – here is an excerpt of the law that has been broken here:

For the exact laws that say it is illegal to fire someone
for being pregnant you need this PDF, check pages starting

with page 18:

“Phase III” of the Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Act

http://www.jil.go.jp/english/documents/JLR15_nakakubo.pdf

(EDITOR’S NOTE – This link is no longer active, so I have uploaded the PDF that was available here. – Erich: Pregnancy Law )

(1) Forced Retirement by Reason of Marriage, Pregnancy or
Childbirth, and Dismissal for Marriage
“Paragraph 1 of Article 9 prohibits employers from
stipulating “marriage, pregnancy or childbirth” as a reason for
retirement of female workers, and Paragraph 2 of the same
article states that employers shall not dismiss female
workers for marriage. These provisions were contained in
the former EEOA, although dismissal for marriage was
prohibited together with dismissals by reason of
pregnancy, childbirth or maternity leaves taken before and
after childbirth. These are dealt with separately in
Paragraph 3 of Article 9, as shown below. ”
“(3) Dismissal during Pregnancy or in the First Year after
Childbirth Moreover, Paragraph 4 of Article 9 was added as an
entirely new provision, which says that dismissal of
female workers who are pregnant or in the first year after
childbirth shall be “void.” At first glance this provision appears rather
drastic, but the following proviso states that this shall
not apply in the event that employers prove that the
dismissal is not for reasons prescribed in Paragraph 3 of
Article 9. Hence, this is in essence a change in the
burden of proof. Nonetheless, it will be of great
significance in the real workplace that the dismissal is
presumed to be void, since employers have to refrain from
dismissing female workers in the absence of a fully
persuasive reason for termination.

Article 9 (Prohibition, etc. of Disadvantageous Treatment
by Reason of Marriage, Pregnancy, Childbirth, etc.)
(1) Employers shall not stipulate marriage, pregnancy or
childbirth as a reason for retirement of women workers.
(2) Employers shall not dismiss women workers for
marriage.
(3) Employers shall not dismiss or give disadvantageous
treatment to women workers by reason of pregnancy,
childbirth, or for requesting absence from work as
prescribed in Article 65, paragraph 1, of the Labor
Standards Act (Act No. 49 of 1947), or having taken
absence from work as prescribed in the same Article,
paragraph 1 or 2, of the same act, or by other reasons
relating to pregnancy, childbirth as provided by Ordinance
of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
(4) Dismissal of women workers who are pregnant or in the
first year after childbirth shall be void. However, this
shall not apply in the event that the employer proves that
the dismissal in question was not for reasons prescribed
in the preceding paragraph.”

Within a few days of receiving this email, they had called Martina into the office to negotiate. They gave her a settlement of double the amount she would have made had she worked until she had planned to quit. They weren’t exactly kind to her in their negotiations, but they did at least do what they should have in lieu of hiring her back if they had already hired her replacement.

It really is a shame that Interac had to be threatened with legal action to do the right thing, but at least they did the right thing in the end. I hate to imagine what would have happened had there been no union to question the decision making of the management.

I contacted Martina in March of this year, and she told me that she might be going to start working for Interac again this year. When I contacted her a few weeks ago to ask how she was doing… She told me this:

“Mr. Will Smith had promised to hire me back a few months before the start of the school year, but beginning of April I got a call from him telling me that they didn’t need me to teach at Interac. They had no explanation for it.”

Disappointing, but not surprising.
Seek help, learn your rights, and fight back the way that Martina did.
Don’t let yourself be a victim.

In solidarity,
Erich

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080105f1.html

THIS FOREIGN LAND
Assistant language teachers in trying times

By KANAKO TAKAHARA
Staff writer
Last of four parts

In November, Samantha Bouton, an assistant language teacher working at a public elementary school in the rural town of Shibayama, Chiba Prefecture, had a fever of 38.5 degrees and was diagnosed as suffering bronchitis.

Because of her illness, Bouton, a 25-year-old U.S. native from Oregon who has been teaching in Japan’s public schools since 2004, had to take leave for two weeks.

But her employer, Interac, a temp staff dispatch agency and leading provider of ALTs in Japan, told her she had already used up her seven days of annual paid leave — less than the 12 days she is entitled to under labor law — to cover the days she was sick.

“I went in every morning and the vice principal would take my temperature, cancel every class and send me home,” said Bouton, a contract worker at Interac, adding she had hoped that if she was sent home by the school, she would get sick leave. But her paycheck showed her salary was deducted for the days she took leave.

That and other poor working conditions for Interac employees was enough to convince Bouton and her husband, Greg Diamond, who also works for Interac as an ALT, that it is not worth working in Japan anymore. The couple plan to return to the United States in April.

“I have worked here from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. minimum. And after three years, I still don’t have social insurance, I haven’t gotten a bonus and I haven’t gotten a raise,” Diamond lamented.

ALTs are native English language teachers who offer assistance to Japanese teachers to help improve the oral communication skills of students in public and private elementary, junior high and high schools.

In the past, ALTs were recruited through the government-sponsored Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. But as the coffers of local governments began to dwindle in recent years, many switched from JET program ALTs to those cheaper private companies outsource.

According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the number of JET program ALTs dropped to 5,057 in fiscal 2006 from 5,676 in fiscal 2002, while non-JET ALTs doubled to 5,951 in fiscal 2006 from 3,090 in fiscal 2002.

Currently, English language is a compulsory subject in junior high schools, but demand for ALTs is expected to increase in the future because English will become mandatory for fifth-graders in elementary schools starting in 2011.

But the lower cost of company ALTs comes at the expense of the teachers’ low salaries and lack of benefits, including health insurance, unemployment insurance, pension and less paid leave.

“It makes Nova working conditions look like paradise,” said Louis Carlet, deputy secretary general at the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, referring to Nova Corp., the nation’s biggest language school before it went under in October.

Nova teachers who suddenly lost their jobs were left in limbo, with some unable to pay their rent or even able to afford daily necessities. But others found re-employment at G.education Co., which took over part of Nova’s business.

But G.education said in December it can only hire 200 more employees in addition to the 1,447 it has so far employed, a reversal of its earlier promise to hire all former teachers and Japanese staff at Nova.

Despite the difficulties Nova teachers went through, Carlet said Nova’s working conditions, when it was in business, were much better than those for private company ALTs. The pay of private ALTs is lower, they have contracts of less than a year and they don’t get paid during school vacation periods, he said.

Carlet blamed local boards of education, saying they simply want to avoid the responsibility of hiring foreigners by subcontracting the work to private companies. Under the system, the boards sign contracts with private firms that hire foreign teachers as ALTs.

“If they hire them directly, it means they have responsibility for their employment, and if something happens, they have to deal with it directly,” Carlet said. “What they want is to have all those problems, especially those hiring foreigners, pushed onto the private companies.”

Some boards of education choose private ALT dispatch agencies through a bidding process, forcing them to cut costs further, he said.

The fact that the ALTs are hired as contract workers instead of full-time employees also makes their position insecure.

Companies need to enroll part-time employees in the social insurance system if they work more than three-fourths of full-time employee working hours, or 30 hours a week.

But since the firms want to avoid shouldering additional benefit costs, they ask ALTs to work less than 30 hours or count the working hours by the number of lessons they teach instead of the number of hours they spend in the workplace.

Some ALTs who just want to work for a year or two in Japan prefer not being enrolled in the social insurance system to avoid paying insurance premiums and have higher take-home wages. But those seeking a longer stay tend to seek better benefits.

David Ashton, president of the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus of the Tokyo Nambu Union, said ALTs’ limited Japanese language ability makes it hard for them to realize their rights or take action.

“If they get fired for some invalid reason, they go from one low-paid, poor-condition ALT job to another one,” Ashton said. “There are always more (teachers) ready to take the job because they just left another job.”

The working conditions of company ALTs are in sharp contrast with JET program teachers. The government-sponsored exchange program was launched in 1987 to boost relationships at the grassroots level amid fierce trade friction between Japan and the U.S.

The JET program offers generous working conditions to encourage foreigners to apply. They are given a monthly salary of ¥300,000, are covered by social insurance and given up to 20 days of paid holidays in addition to sick leave.

“The condition in Kamagaya is really, really good,” said James Chenery, 29, a JET program teacher in Kamagaya, Chiba Prefecture, who came from Northern Ireland to Japan three years ago.

Wages and benefits are not the only thing Chenery is talking about.

The overall working conditions have allowed him to become part of the local community. In his spare time, he teaches English at community centers and is given Japanese lessons by volunteers.

Because he only covers three schools in the district, he gets to know students better.

Private company ALTs, however, tend to be dispatched to dozens of schools, hopping from one school to another. This makes it hard for teachers to become attached to students they teach.

Asked what his plans are after the maximum five years as an ALT in the JET program are up, Chenery said he hopes his Japanese will have improved well enough by then for him to find another job here.

Meanwhile, local boards of education have started to realize they cannot get competent, experienced teachers either by subcontracting to private firms or through the JET program because many of them come to Japan just out of college without any background in education.

Taito Ward in Tokyo said it plans to stop outsourcing ALTs to private companies. It is considering advertising for candidates on its Web site and asking them to give a presentation on the kind of lessons they plan to offer as part of its screening process.

The city of Musashino on the outskirts of Tokyo plans to seek applicants among native English speakers who live in the area instead of subcontracting from private companies.

Ashton of the Nambu union said the best way to improve the quality of English teachers and subsequently the standards of English in Japanese schools is to stop outsourcing to private companies.

Ashton noted that the standard of English language education will not improve if the dispatching companies keep sending people who have just arrived in the country with no teaching experience.

“If (the government) wants to improve the quality of language in the public and private school system, the best thing is to hire qualified teachers, compensate them well, give them opportunities for training and give them job security so they’ll want to keep working here,” Ashton said.