東日本大震災と東京電力・福島第１原子力発電所事故の影響で、日本国内で働いていた外国人労働者が大量に国外流出した影響が深刻化している。原発事故後に一時、東日本や日本からの避難勧告を出した国々は勧告を解除し、欧米系の外国人は徐々に戻りつつあるが、中国など近隣のアジア系外国人の戻りは鈍いままだ。
Berlitz
Most public elementary school educators feel specialists should teach English
More than 70 percent of public elementary school educators believe teachers specializing in English should instruct English at elementary schools rather than homeroom teachers, according to a survey conducted by Benesse Corp.
68% of elementary school teachers lack confidence in teaching English
A majority of elementary school teachers who are about to start teaching English as a required subject to fifth and sixth graders this April lack confidence in teaching the subject and feel burdened by it, a recent survey by a private research body showed Tuesday.
Business English revives schools
The recent corporate trend of making English the “official language” within companies has given a tailwind to the formerly faltering English language school business.
As a number of companies aim to establish or maintain a global presence, English language schools are working to develop educational programs more practical than those offered by their rivals for businesspeople who need to use English at work.
Such a move came after companies, including online shopping mall operator Rakuten, Inc. and Fast Retailing Co., the operator of casual clothing chain Uniqlo, required their employees to use English as their official in-house language.
The English education-related industry has striven to capitalize on what it views as a golden opportunity.
During the April-June period, Berlitz Japan, Inc., an operator of foreign language schools, saw the number of its corporate customers and individual regular students who are company employees jump 50 percent from a year earlier. Its summer short program also has attracted about 2-1/2 times as many students as in the previous year.
Another English school operator, Gaba Corp., enjoyed a similar boost, with corporate contracts up 12 percent year on year in the first half of 2010.
According to private research firm Yano Research Institute, the market for foreign language business shrank about 5.8 percent to 502.6 billion yen in fiscal 2009, forcing Geos Corp., a major industry player, to file for bankruptcy.
With the economy recovering, however, the nation’s corporate environment has changed. With a growing number of companies aiming to expand their overseas operations, particularity in Asia, they are racing to secure people with a good command of English.
Panasonic Corp. is set to hire about 80 percent of its new employees who are fresh out of school for next fiscal year overseas. Half of the 600 people that Fast Retailing plans to employ in fiscal 2011 are also expected to be non-Japanese. Such moves have boosted the popularity of business English programs.
A 35-year-old company employee who studies at an English language school in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, said, “As we’ve come to communicate with overseas clients through e-mail and video conferences on a daily basis, I’m worried that I might slow down business operations because of my poor English.”
“Companies like Rakuten could fuel ‘English fever,'” a source familiar with the industry said.
Talks drag on, teachers fired in Berlitz case
After 20 months of legal wrangling, neither side has managed to snag a win in Berlitz Japan‘s ¥110 million lawsuit against five teachers and their union, Begunto.
On the recommendation of the case’s lead judge, the company and union have been in court-mediated reconciliation talks since December. The agreement to enter the talks came after a year of court hearings into the suit.
“The vast, vast majority of cases (in Japan) are decided out of court, and that’s the way the whole thing is designed,” explains lawyer Timothy Langley, president of Langley Enterprise K.K., a consultancy specializing in labor issues. “It works even though it’s frustrating; people eventually define the solution themselves.”
Louis Carlet, one of the union officials being sued, describes progress at the once-a-month, 30-minute negotiating sessions as “glacially slow.”
It will be up to the judge to decide how long to let this process play out, says Tadashi Hanami, professor emeritus at Sophia University and former chair of the Central Labor Relations Commission. “Talks for the purpose of conciliatory settlement will continue as long as the judge finds there is a possibility for settlement by compromise.”
The current focus of negotiations is the amount of notice union members should give the company ahead of industrial action. Initially, Berlitz Japan offered to drop their lawsuit if teachers gave a week’s notice before striking. Begunto proposed five minutes. Since teachers typically only learn the next day’s schedule the night before, the judge instructed the company to come up with a better offer.
Asked how much notice unions legally have to give before striking, Langley replied, “None. Zero. That’s one of the beauties of a strike: You just strike.”
In the latest round of talks held Thursday, Berlitz Japan requested contract teachers give strike notification by 3 p.m. the day before, and per-lesson teachers by 5 p.m. Begunto pointed out to the judge that per-lesson teachers don’t receive their schedule until 6 p.m. the day before. Union executives have taken the offer back to members for consideration.
The battle between Berlitz Japan and Begunto began with a strike launched Dec. 13, 2007, as Berlitz Japan and its parent company, Benesse Corp., were enjoying record profits. Teachers, who had gone without an across-the-board raise for 16 years, struck for a 4.6-percent pay hike and a one-month bonus. The action grew into the largest sustained strike in the history of Japan’s language school industry, with more than 100 English, Spanish and French teachers participating in walkouts across Kanto.
On Dec. 3, 2008, Berlitz Japan claimed the strike was illegal and sued for a total of ¥110 million in damages. Named in the suit were the five teachers volunteering as Begunto executives, as well as two union officials: the president of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, Yujiro Hiraga , and Carlet, former NUGW case officer for Begunto and currently executive president of Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union (Tozen).
While believing their strike to be legal, Begunto decided to suspend industrial action until the lawsuit is settled rather than risk the dismissal of union members. However, the company fired two of the teachers it’s suing anyway.
One, who didn’t want to be named, received word of his dismissal just before shipping out to Afghanistan as a U.S. Army reservist at the end of July 2009. Berlitz Japan had allowed the teacher to take unpaid leave for military duty several times before the strike. But after being the only teacher at his Yokohama branch to walk out, he began getting complaints from students.
According to Begunto members, after being ordered to deploy to Afghanistan, Berlitz Japan told the teacher he could take a leave of absence of less than a year, and that he’d have to quit if he needed more than a year. Two days before he left for Afghanistan the company fired him. According to the dismissal letter, his performance was subpar and was hurting the company’s image.
“The union believes strongly that the teacher’s dismissal was because he was the only striker at Yokohama,” says Carlet.
Another of the teachers named in the suit, Catherine Campbell, was fired earlier this month after taking too long to recover from late-stage breast cancer cancer. In June 2009, Campbell took a year of unpaid leave to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Because Berlitz Japan failed to enroll Campbell in the shakai hoken health insurance scheme, she was unable to receive the two-thirds wage coverage it provides and had to live with her parents in Canada during treatment. The company denied Campbell’s request to extend her leave from June to Sept. 2010 and fired her for failing to return to work.
Berlitz Japan work rules allow for leave-of-absence extensions where the company deems it necessary.
“If cancer is not such a case, what would be?” Campbell asks. “On one hand, I’m lucky to be alive and healthy enough to even want to go back to work, so everything else pales in comparison,” she explained. “But on the other, the company’s decision does seem hard to understand. The leave is unpaid, and I don’t receive any health benefits, so it wouldn’t cost Berlitz anything to keep me on; and for me, it’s that much harder to restart my life without a job.”
Michael Mullen, Berlitz Japan senior human resources manager, declined to comment for this article, writing in an e-mail, “At the current time the company does not want to make any comments due to the ongoing legal dispute.”
The union is fighting both dismissals at the Tokyo Labor Commission. The panel is also hearing an unfair labor practices suit filed by Begunto that charges Berlitz Japan bargained in bad faith and illegally interfered with the strike by sending a letter to teachers telling them the strike was illegal and to stop walking out.
The next round of reconciliation talks and Tokyo Labor Commission hearing are both scheduled for Sept. 6.
Berlitz blitz against union bogs down
In December, after a year of strike action by over 100 teachers, the company filed a lawsuit against seven union members. Named in the suit are five Berlitz teachers who volunteer as Berlitz General Union Tokyo (Begunto) executives and two officials from the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu: President Yujiro Hiraga and Louis Carlet [currently President of Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union], [and formerly] the deputy general secretary [of NUGW Tokyo Nambu] and [former] Begunto case officer. Claiming the Begunto strike is illegal and meant to damage the company, Berlitz sued the defendants for ¥110 million each.
Ever since launching their legal battle, lawyers for Berlitz have appeared reluctant to go over the top. After gaining an extension in January for more time to prepare evidence and legal arguments, Berlitz lawyers still submitted their documents 10 days past the end-of-March deadline set by the judge.
The second hearing in the suit lasted a matter of minutes. One judge complained that after reading the company’s recently filed documents he still couldn’t understand their reasoning for why the strike was illegal. He told Berlitz’s lawyers to provide a concise and understandable summary of their arguments before the next hearing. Looking at the crowd of union supporters in the courtroom, the judge added that the summary was necessary not only to help him understand the company’s position, but also for the benefit of all those coming to hear the case.
Campbell expressed disappointment at the latest delay. “It’s the dragging-on that’s very frustrating. They sued in December and you’d think they would have their evidence prepared. In this case they sued and then prepared their evidence. Not only that, but they took an enormous amount of time and still haven’t finished it all.”
The last collective bargaining session between Berlitz and Begunto took place March 13. The company rejected the entire list of teachers’ demands, which included a 4.6-percent raise in base pay, the retraction of the warning letter sent to striking teachers, the introduction of a bonus system, and the disclosure of documents related to Berlitz’s financial health.
Both sides appear prepared for a lengthy legal battle. After the first January court date for Berlitz’s lawsuit, Ken Yoshida, one of the union’s lawyers, said the company’s legal team was “stalling,” and that it would be a long, drawn-out court fight.
Berlitz strike grows despite naysayers
Historic six-month action is starting to reap dividends
Despite scabs, naysayers and second-guessing pundits in the English-language media, Berlitz teachers are making history. With more than 100 teachers striking at dozens of schools around the Kanto region for over six months, the industrial action at Berlitz is now the largest sustained strike in Japan’s language school history.
Begunto demands a 4.6 percent base pay hike and a one-off bonus of one month’s salary. Berlitz Japan has not raised teachers’ base pay for 16 years. Three years ago, the language school lowered starting pay by over 10 percent per lesson, a cut only partially mitigated by a performance-based raise this year.
These demands are carried over from last year and are the two key demands of Begunto’s 2008 “shunto.”
Shunto is the traditional labor offensive that unions around the country wage each spring. It literally means “spring battle.” In Japan, even labor disputes invoke seasonal change.
Although management’s two proposals have thus far fallen short of Begunto’s demands, members are showing extraordinary energy and commitment to building momentum in the strike until the demands are met. Two language centers that have had particularly effective walkouts are the powerful Akasaka and Ikebukuro “shops.” More than half of all Berlitz schools in Kanto have participated in the strike.
In order to realize the strike demands, the union has organized and coordinated sophisticated surgical strikes, including bait-and-switch and strike feints. This keeps bosses on their toes.
Due to logistic issues, Begunto often can give written notice to the company only several minutes before the start of a particular strike. So management has had to scramble to cover lessons. They sometimes send and pay replacement teachers to cover lessons that end up not being struck, so nonstrikes can be as costly to the company as strikes. On other occasions, management sets up a team of replacement teachers at a nearby cafe, ready to rush over at a moment’s notice in case a strike occurs. The union calls these scabs-in-waiting “caffeine cowboys.” The company also assigns teachers to special “scab-watch” periods, meaning they get paid to wait in case a strike might happen.
Berlitz apparently prefers to spend a great deal of money and energy breaking the strike rather than resolving it by meeting the union’s reasonable demands. Their reasonableness becomes evident in light of Japan’s rising consumer price index (up 2.1 percent year-on-year in August), the slashing of starting pay in 2005 and the 16-year pay hike drought.
In addition to striking nearly every day, Begunto has held demonstrations at various schools around the Kanto Plain nearly every week and has toured Tokyo several times in a sound truck, announcing over a loud speaker, to make sure that the public knows why Berlitz teachers are fighting.
Begunto recently posted on the bulletin board of many Berlitz schools a document entitled “Definition of a Scab,” which caused some controversy. The definition actually belongs to author Jack London and includes such colorful hyperbole as:
“After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab.
“A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.
“When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out.”
That neither London nor Begunto meant the above definition in a literal way hardly needs mention. That union members are frustrated every time a fellow teacher chooses to help break the strike is why the document went up.
Union members never insist that every single Berlitz employee strike alongside his or her coworkers. They have only asked that teachers refrain from covering struck lessons when it is optional, as it often is. Scabs undermine the hard work, sacrifice and dedication of striking teachers and prolong resolution of the dispute.
One thing I learned from this strike is that there is no way to stay out of it. Each employee is forced by the circumstances of the strike to make a personal decision, which is either: 1) to join the strike; 2) to stay on the sidelines but refuse to cover lessons when it is optional; 3) to help break the strike by choosing to cover struck lessons.
Demonstrating its moderation in comparison with many labor unions, Begunto members have decided to consider only members of the third group as full-fledged “scabs.” In my opinion, it is a difference between courage and cowardice, principle versus pusillanimity.
It is easy to criticize the strike or the union, especially from the sidelines. What is hard is to get up and do something, to make a difference, fight for justice, take action right at the front lines. Begunto members do more than talk ? they act. The small number of teachers and staff who oppose the strike and/or the union will themselves benefit when the union wins higher pay for all.
In fact, thanks to the solidarity, dedication and hard work of union members – and a strike entails quite a bit of hard work – management has already made two pay hike offers, the latest on Sept. 26. At the time of writing, the union was widely expected to reject the second offer as far short of demands. Yet even this offer would never have happened without the efforts of the Begunto strikers.
Most surprisingly, the strike has been very successful as a union-building tool, drawing in many new members impressed that the union is taking positive action.
The right to strike is guaranteed by the Japanese Constitution, the Trade Union Law and international law. An individual has precious little negotiation strength vis-a-vis a big company (or even a small one). A union acting out of solidarity multiplies the negotiating position of its members exponentially. It also turns the workplace from an effective dictatorship into something approaching a democracy.
Teachers at Simul International – like Berlitz Japan a subsidiary of Benesse Corp. – are also striking, “simultaneously,” as it were. In their case, they are fighting for enrollment in Japan’s “shakai hoken” pension and health scheme. The union argues that Simul management is violating both the Health Insurance Law and Pension Insurance Law by failing to enroll its full-time employees.
So Benesse Group has its hands full with big strikes at two of its member companies at the same time.
It’s ironic that some employees, such as the teacher in the recent article in Tokyo’s Metropolis magazine (“Banding Together”), complain that the strike has not yet led to total victory when they themselves are part of the problem. I would say to them that we have not won yet because you have not joined the strike. Strength in numbers – again it hardly needs mentioning.
When more teachers join the strike rather than grumble that it “hasn’t worked yet,” the union will win.
Louis Carlet is Berlitz General Union’s Tokyo Representative, National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu.
Berlitz Striking Teachers Make History
The Berlitz General Union Tokyo (Begunto, a local of Nambu) maintained and expanded its 2007 shunto strike during this year’s shunto, focusing on two demands: a 4.6% across-the-boards base pay hike and a one month bonus.
Nearly half of all 46 Berlitz schools in the Kanto plain have been hit by walkouts since the dispute began last December. Over 55 teachers have joined in the time-fixed, volunteer strikes, making it by many accounts the largest enduring work stoppage in the history of Japan’s language industry.
“What we have discovered to our surprise and delight and to management’s chagrin is that many employees are joining the union just to participate in the strike,” said Begunto case officer Louis Carlet. “The strike is the best unionizing tool we have ever had.”
Another crucial point is that while most language school labor disputes aim to maintain or protect working conditions or employment, this strike is “aggressive rather than defensive in that we are fighting for a raise,” notes Begunto Vice President Catherine Campbell.
The union has also held several rowdy, boisterous pickets at several schools around the region, even at non-striking schools, urging coworkers to do the right thing. Check out a video of one such action:
Jack London’s scathing “definition of a scab” also hangs on the union board at most Kanto schools. Finally, some Kanagawa strikers created a rap song specifically about our 2008 shunto fight:
As parent firm posts record profits, Berlitz teachers strike back
“Benesse boasts openly on its Web site about the success of its ‘Language Company’ sector, mentioning Berlitz Japan in particular,” notes longtime Berlitz teacher and Begunto (Berlitz General Union Tokyo) Vice President Catherine Campbell.
The language teachers of Begunto didn’t need a math class to put two and two together, and in April 2007 they began “shunto” (spring) negotiations for a “base-up” raise and bonus.
As the time of writing, at least 55 teachers have conducted “spot strikes” at at least 16 Berlitz schools, most of these in greater Tokyo. Begunto says it is encouraged by the response: Some French and Spanish teachers have walked out, and several more teachers have joined the union. That adds up to teachers walking out of 275 lessons in the greater Tokyo area, at large schools in Ikebukuro and Akasaka as well as suburban locations such as Seijo Gakuen, Atsugi and Kashiwa.
Louis Carlet, Deputy Secretary General of the National Union of General Workers [Tokyo Nambu], Begunto’s parent union, writes that Berlitz has been forced to “spend massive amounts of money and resources sending ‘shadows’ to cover the classes of potential strikers with strikebreakers.”
Nova fall just simple math: it bled red
MISMANAGEMENT IN DEFIANCE OF MARKET REALITY
A 330-sq.-meter office with a double bed, sauna and tea room was where Nozomu Sahashi, ousted president of Nova Corp., worked as the language school chain steadily teetered near bankruptcy over the past few years.
Unveiled to the media last week, the spacious presidential suite on the 20th floor of Nova’s head office in Osaka cost the company ¥2.7 million a month to rent and about ¥70 million to redecorate.
The posh office is yet another example of the reckless way Sahashi ran his firm, which filed for court protection under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law on Oct. 26.
Court-appointed administrators are hoping to come up with a new sponsor by the end of this week, which will allow about 7,000 unpaid teachers and 30,000 paid-up students to return to their schools.
Some experts see Nova’s sloppy management as well as huge investment in TV ads as key reasons for the firm’s failure, for which warning signs were seen starting around 2000.
Tsutomu Kuji, author of “Nova Shoho no Maryoku” (“The Magical Power of the Nova Business”), has tracked Nova’s rapid expansion in the 1990s, when it took advantage of the burst in the bubble economy and consequent land price plunge to acquire and rent classrooms at low cost. Then came another economic slump, but the chain continued to pursue expansion and splurge on ads, as Sahashi pursued his extravagant lifestyle.
Nova was investing huge amounts of its resources on TV commercials.
The firm’s advertisement fee rose from ¥4.6 billion in business 1996 to ¥8.9 billion in business 2002, according to Kuji.
In the business year to March, Nova spent ¥7 billion on ads, or about 12 percent of its total sales of ¥57 billion.
Kuji wrote how Nova attracted new students with eye-catching commercials, talked them into paying tens of thousands of yen for lesson tickets for up to three years in advance and then short-changed refunds to students who grew dissatisfied with what they had paid for.
This prompted students to sue Nova for reimbursement.
In April, the Supreme Court ruled Nova’s contract cancellation policy as illegal and ordered it to repay about ¥310,000 to a man who canceled his English lesson contract in 2004 but was offered a much smaller refund than promised.
Nova, however, was not the only company whose business suffered due to sloppy management.
There was a time in the early 1990s when many language schools went bankrupt, prompting an industry group to draw up regulations.
In 1994, the Japan Association for the Promotion of Foreign Language, which has 66 language schools or chains as members, came out with a regulation stipulating that only a year’s worth of lessons could be prepaid for.
“In many of those bankruptcy cases, companies used prepayment money to invest in real estate and golf course memberships, causing them to (run out of cash and) go bankrupt,” said Mihoko Fujimoto, the association’s spokeswoman.
Member companies are obliged to comply with the regulation. But Nova, Japan’s biggest language school chain, did not join.
Now rival language schools fear the Nova collapse may trigger a bankruptcy domino effect or a considerable drop in sales as distrust of the industry mounts.
There is speculation that Nova’s downfall, which was set in motion by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s partial business suspension order, contributed to the bankruptcy of the ABC Language School chain.
Osaka-based ABC Language, a small English-school chain, filed for court protection from creditors in July.
Gaba Corp., listed on the Mothers market for startups, said its net profit for the business year to December is expected to plunge 53 percent to ¥387 million.
Gaba said it has not been able to attract as many new students as expected this year because of the Nova meltdown.
But according to Yano Research Institute Ltd, the language school business has been declining since 2003 as the market became saturated.
The market peaked in 2003 with ¥375 billion in combined sales but it shrunk to ¥346 billion in business 2006, according to Yano Research.
The market is expected to drop 4.7 percent to ¥330 billion by the end of March, it said.
In 2003, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare began to slash grants for vocational education, including language courses, causing the market to shrink, said Mika Fukuoka, a researcher at Yano Research.
Grants for such courses started in 1998, allowing those who had paid job insurance premiums for five years or more to apply for the grant to cover 80 percent of lesson fees ? up to ¥300,000.
In 2003, however, the ministry limited the grant to 40 percent, or up to ¥200,000, after it determined some grant recipients had not been entitled to them.
The grant cut led to a decline in students and the industry began to shrink.
“Frankly speaking, I don’t think there is any language school whose business is on solid footing,” Fukuoka said.
Language school chains Gaba and Berlitz Japan Inc., which target high-end customers, are the few still relatively successful, Fukuoka said.
“During the bubble economy, many housewives who had time and money took English lessons as a hobby,” she said. “But now, only those who really need to study English will take lessons.”