C. Smith Blog Post: Legal Violations in ALT Private Dispatch Companies in Japan

There are moments in life that we regret and find difficult to discuss. The following definitely fits that description. I gain no pleasure in taking this trip down memory lane, but if it will prevent my fellow classmates from making a similar mistake, then my recounting this will be for the greater good. To remain silent and allow this to happen again, especially to one of my own classmates, is something I should try to prevent if at all possible.

In August of 2009 I was hired by Interac, a private education firm, to teach in Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher. I was looking forward to the work and I was excited to be able to go back to Japan. Though things started to turn bad fairly quickly, I tried to make the best of it. I think my first inkling that something wasn't right was being told after I arrived that I wasn't going to draw my first paycheck for two months. That was just the opening volley.

This essay is to persuade you to avoid working for Interac and other haken companies in Japan.

Some background information is necessary to understand what is happening and why. Public schools in Japan are required by law to have a foreign speaker of English on hand to instruct the students at the school, but the schools are free to choose how to address this problem. Some use the JET program, others opt for direct hire of a foreign instructor, and some others use gyomu itaku (service contracts), which are offered by private language teaching companies such as Interac, . These firms use 派遣社員 /hakenshain (temporary workers or permatemps) as teachers in schools under short-term contracts. These contracts are in fact illegal. According to the Ministry of Education, the principal must be in charge of all teachers at his (or her) school, but under gyomu itaku contracts, the company is in charge of the employee.[1]

These contracts are popular with school boards because of the relative low cost of the instructor and the ability to quickly replace a teacher without the possibility of negotiation. The positions offered by these companies are very unstable; if the board of education complains (for whatever reason), the company can lose the contract for that school and the teacher can be summarily dismissed. It is extremely easy to fire a haken employee; the easiest way is not to renew his temporary contract at the end of his service. This is unfortunately a very real possibility. The Tokyo General Union estimates that there is a 50% chance of an ALT quitting or being fired unfairly because of unfair working conditions [2].

These unfair working conditions include not enrolling teachers in shakai hoken, the national health insurance plan, the social pension plan, paying teachers for the hours they work, or the constant fear of being fired. At one training meeting I attended, I was told that we might have to wait for a phone call in between school semesters to find out if we still had a job and would go in to work the next day. These conditions are unacceptable for any professional teacher. To be told that you suddenly have no job with the rent due date coming soon and no way home is something I hope none of you have to experience.

The work itself was at times acceptable, but there were many aspects of it that were unsavory. I was at school from 8 to 5 every day, but I was only paid for 29.5 hours a week. My former employer often split its workers time between “Maxceed” and “Interac” (which are in reality the same company) simply to avoid paying the unemployment insurance it is required by law to its employees [3]. The fact that I was employed by a private dispatch company, not the school itself, also complicated things quite a bit. One of my schools (in fact the one that cost me my job) asked me to prepare lesson plans for the students, but only did so in a very vague way. I remember being told to prepare "interesting lessons", but I never received any guidance from them even though I submitted my lesson plans well in advance of the actual teaching days. The letter I wrote to them after I was fired read thusly:

---

This kit is for [redacted] and [redacted].

I wanted to give you something. These are my lesson plans and various items I used.
I hope that you will find them useful.

There is something you should be aware of. For the amount of money being paid to your haken teachers, you will only get young people fresh out of college who happen to like Japan. You will not be able to afford a person trained as a high school teacher with a degree in Education. It is simply not possible.

I wanted to be a part of your school. I paid for my plane ticket to and from Japan, for my car, for all the things I used in class, for my gas, indeed, for everything. My first paycheck, after rent was deducted, was a paltry 54,000 yen [editor's note: about 646 dollars, and I got that after waiting two months for my first paycheck]. Still, I had come to work. I was ready to work in a professional environment.

That's not what I got.

When I worked for you, you told me to plan the entire curriculum for your students.
I received no feedback or guidance from either one of you. I submitted my lesson plans to you well in advance . If you disliked something, or wanted to change something, you had only to say so. I was told to make interesting lessons, but no matter what I tried, there was no pleasing you, even if I mimicked the plans of the previous teacher you think so highly of.

I did not appreciate your standing beside me and badmouthing me in Japanese as if I couldn't understand.

But I'm getting sidetracked now, so I need to state my main point clearly:
You're in charge of the program at your school. The ALT is not. The ALT is an _Assistant_ Language Teacher. Perhaps you don't happen to like dealing with foreigners at your school, but that is part of your job. The ALT is not someone you can just foist all of your teaching responsibilities onto, especially when he is an underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated temporary hire.

I hope that you will be a better guide for the foreign teachers that come to your school in the future. Perhaps then you won't have a new one coming in every three to five months. You also won't have to lie to your students about how the ALTs keep quitting due to "health reasons".

That's about all I wanted to say.

-Smith [4]

---

As Louis Carlet noted, schools want to avoid the responsibility of directly hiring foreigners, but want the right to fire them at will [5].

My experience is not an isolated incident. I'd also like to direct your attention to a particular documentary describing the issues faced by haken ALTs[7]. The part I want you to see starts from 0:29 in the film. Eric, a teacher on a temp contract who was fired, speaks about how his life is now unstable and he is unable to save any money, that he was paid only for days worked in December (leaving him with about $1000 in pay for that month, which rent quickly ate into). I recognize the Interac paystub shown in the video, which means he worked for the same company. He also observes that there have been some months he's been so broke he's used his credit card to pay the rent. He tried to weather through the difficulty and continue teaching, but his contracts were always for 6 months at a time, and he could be terminated at any time. He complains bitterly about not receiving shakai hoken and pension payments because the company fudged his hours and tried to use that as justification for not enrolling him in these systems. By making his official working day between 8:30 and 4:30 pm (and requiring him to be on school premises between 8 and 5), the company was able to accomplish this. The video goes on to note that the Osaka Board of Education determined that these conditions were illegal. When he was summarily dismissed (see 0:54 in this video link no explanation was given or offered to him. The General Union comments that unless conditions improve, English education will be impossible in Japan. At 3:00, we are paid a visit to Robert-san's apartment as he deals with his dwindling savings caused by his dismissal by subsisting on bean sprouts and a 100 yen cut of salmon. After being fired by Interac, he has since been unable to find work in Japan. At 3:55 in the video, he again observes that no reason was given to him. Much later on in the video, students are asked to raise their hand if their school has changed Assistant Language Teachers more than five times in one year (and all of them raise their hands). The students are apparently being told the teachers quit because of "health reasons". One young boy comments that he's had his English teacher changed more than eight times in the same year, and the young lady states that she's had her teacher changed more than four times in the same year. This is completely unfair to the children and robs them of having the chance to have a professional, experienced teacher of English.

The report continues to note that while the JET teachers seemed more friendly, the haken ALTs seem far more reluctant to spend time with the children. Based on my own experience, being mistreated by my employer made it harder for me to do my job. Knowing that I was in danger of being fired, or (towards the end of my employment) working while knowing I was going to be dismissed made it harder for me to concentrate on doing my job.

The upshot of what happened to me, once it was brought to the attention of the General Union, is that Interac was found guilty of unfair labor practices by the Osaka Prefectural Board and forbiden the Osaka Board of Education from entering into contracts with Interac [6]. The General Union was very supportive and I am thankful for their help. Unfortunately, I still lost my job by not being rehired at the end of my contract. The three months I spent looking for work and trying to avoid spending money were emotionally exhausting and in the end I had to ask my parents for money to fly back to America. I probably lost close to $6000 as a result of this entire experience (buying plane tickets to and from Japan, the car I needed to do my job, miscellaneous expenses, key money for the apartment, etc.). If I had to describe this experience in one word, 'horrific' seems to sum it up adequately. I was able to salvage something out of the experience because of my interest in Japan and ability to communicate, but a person totally new to Japan would be unable to rely on either of those for comfort. As the Tokyo General Union noted, these scofflaw contracts not only lower respect for ALTs, teachers, and lecturers, but for the administrators that rely on them, and education as a whole.

I would like to conclude this post by strongly urging all of you to not work for Interac or other haken companies. You deserve better. The schoolchildren of Japan deserve better, too.

1 - http://alt.150m.com/
2 - http://tokyogeneralunion.org/issues/ALT/
3 - http://interacunion.org/2010/10/01/open-letter-to-kevin-salthouse/#more-399
4 - personal letter to a certain high school, sent before I had to leave Japan
5 - http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/member.html?fl20041214zg.htm
6 - http://www.generalunion.org/alt/news/741
7 - リアル特集＋ (Real Special Edition). Aired on Nihon Terebi, July 17 2009.