Workers from all parts of the globe battled wind and rain Sunday to give speeches, performances and then trudge through the streets of Shibuya, Tokyo, calling for job security and equality for all.
“This march is about raising people’s awareness about the job situation in Japan, especially for foreigners,” said an American woman dressed as the pink rabbit mascot for Nova, the nation’s biggest chain of English-language schools. “It keeps getting worse and worse, with job contracts and other common problems.
“We want contracts that are more beneficial for employees, not just for companies,” she said, asking to keep her name confidential.
About 300 mainly foreign supporters attended the “March In March,” which was organized by the National Union of General Workers Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus, Kanagawa City Union, Zentoitsu Workers’ Union and Tokyo Occupational Safety and Wealth Center.
“Three main areas are involved in our work,” said Peruvian Augusto Tamanaha, from Kanagawa City Union. “The first is dismissal. It’s too easy for foreigners to get fired for no or poor reasons. Second is salary issues. And third relates to accidents.
“For example, in an accident in the workplace, why do Japanese have one kind of treatment and migrant workers have another?” he asked. “We are fighting to (make employers) obey the law — the Labor (Standard) Law — as migrant people.”
“The most important thing is job security,” said Briton Bob Tench, general secretary of the National Union of General Workers [Tokyo Nambu] Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus. “The vast majority of language teachers are on fixed contracts, which in no way gives job security, because when the year ends there’s the threat that your contract may not be renewed.”
Social insurance and pensions are also equally serious issues, he said. “A lot of foreign workers are not enrolled in ‘shakai hosho’ (social security), which is against the law. It puts people at a great risk of hardship if they suffer from an illness or an accident.”
TozenAdmin
Students at ‘McEnglish’ schools taste the spit in the burger
“We’re supposed to have 10 minutes between classes, but get none. We’re not allowed to talk to students away from the classroom. We have to move around our building via the emergency exit stairwell,” one former English teacher tells Weekly Playboy. “The pay is 250,000 yen a month. At first I thought it wasn’t bad, but we don’t get a raise or a bonus or paid vacation. There’s a teacher turnover of about 90 percent a year.”
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/news/20070227p2g00m0dm005000c.html
Education Minister Slammed For Comparing Human Rights To Fatty Butter
[Amnesty International] slammed Japan’s education minister on Tuesday for comparing human rights to fatty butter and saying too much would give Japan “human rights metabolic syndrome.”
“No matter how nutritious it is, if one ate only butter every single day, one would get metabolic syndrome,” Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki reportedly said at a speech in south Japan on Sunday. “Human rights are important, but if we respect them too much, Japanese society will end up having human rights metabolic syndrome.”
The offending remarks “ignore the human rights of citizens,” Amnesty International said in a letter sent Tuesday to Ibuki and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The group demanded Ibuki retract his remarks.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070227p2a00m0na029000c.html
Abe Sees No Problem With Education Minister Calling Japan ‘Homogeneous’
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday downplayed criticisms over his education minister’s remarks a day earlier and said there was nothing wrong with the minister calling Japan an “extremely homogenous” country. “I think he was referring to the fact that we have gotten along with each other fairly well so far,” Abe said when asked to comment on the remarks by education minister Bunmei Ibuki. “I don’t see any specific problem with that.”
Japan ‘extremely homogenous’, extremely racialist
In 1986, [then] Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone described Japan as a “homogenous race” nation and faced strong criticism, mainly from Ainu indigenous people.
[Education minister Bunmei Ibuki] speaking at a convention of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s chapter in Nagasaki Prefecture, [echoed Nakasone by asserting], “Japan has been historically governed by the Yamato (Japanese) race. Japan is an extremely homogenous country.
Immigration Officer Faces Charges
A local immigration official faces charges for driving government cars on about 250 occasions without a driver’s license, sources at the bureau said.
He was hired in January 1999 and was assigned to the Hiroshima Regional Immigration Bureau, where he was in charge of immigration control at Hiroshima Airport. He had been cracking down on illegal immigrants since he was transferred to the Osaka bureau in April last year.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070224p2a00m0na013000c.html
Editor Claims Magazine on Foreigner Crimes Not Racist
On what are called “entertainment” pages, there are photographs of foreigners and Japanese women embracing on Tokyo streets. One photo of a black man and a Japanese woman has the caption, “Hey nigger!! Don’t touch that Japanese woman’s ass!!”
[Shigeki Saka, editor of the magazine Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu or ?Secret Foreigner Crime Files?] said that while he knew the term “nigger” is racist, he reckoned it would have a different nuance written in Japanese. “We used it as street slang, writing it in katakana. But if we had known that we would get such a huge reaction from foreigners, we might have refrained from using it,” he figured.
Saka said that although the book had been pulled from Family Mart, it is still available at some bookstores and on the Internet.
Hideki Morihara, secretary general of International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism, said the magazine is only part of a wider problem for which the government is partially responsible.
Nova searched in contract row
Offices of English-conversation school operator Nova were searched over allegations the company was cheating students who canceled their lesson contracts, sources said. The searches at Nova’s head office in Osaka and some of its schools were conducted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Tokyo metropolitan government, the sources said Thursday.Nova is suspected of refusing to refund a reasonable amount to students and deceiving them about the cancellation process.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200702170164.html
Nova probed over refunds, deception
Big English school faces sales ban
Government authorities have rapped the knuckles of private English school chain Nova Corp. for allegedly shortchanging students on refunds and providing false accounts of its cancellation policy.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government inspected Nova’s headquarters in Osaka and several schools Wednesday. The company may get a directive forbidding it from enrolling new students if clear evidence of legal violations is found in further investigations, officials said Friday.
According to the officials, several Nova schools failed to give full refunds to students who canceled their remaining lessons after paying in advance.
Other clients have complained that Nova refused to accept their unconditional cancellation, claiming the cooling-off period had expired.
By law, clients of private language schools have an eight-day cooling-off period, during which they are entitled to a full refund if they cancel their contract.
But Nova claimed the cooling-off periods began on the days the applicants registered their names and addresses, and not when they actually signed the contract.
Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari said at a press conference Friday, “I think there are problems (with Nova) because the number of reported cases of trouble and complaints exceeded 1,000 cases in fiscal 2005 alone.”
A Nova spokesman at its head office in Osaka said the company was not engaged in any unlawful activities.
“How we calculate the refund in case of a cancellation is spelled out in our brochure. We are doing business according to rules,” the spokesman claimed.
Founded in 1981, Nova has grown rapidly since the 1990s by charging less for lessons than other English schools, and opening outlets in convenient locations, often near railway stations.
The company was listed in 1996 on the Jasdaq Securities Exchange for startups and now boasts the largest number of students in the industry, with about 480,000 as of September 2005.
NOVA raided after complaints over missing tuition fees
This is not the first time the eikaiwa giant has been pulled up for dishonest business practices. A court ruled against NOVA in a lawsuit filed by a student seeking the return of 700,000 yen in lesson fees in May 2003, and the National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan said that it has received 7,750 complaints and inquiries about the compant since 1996.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070216p2a00m0na017000c.html