Dispatch

Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union Sues Max Ali For Unfair Labor Practices

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Today at the Tokyo Labor Commission, Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union sued Max Ali (AKA Muhammed Ali Muhammed Mustafa, Japan Advanced Labor Agency, et alii) for Unfair Labor Practices under the Labor Union Act (Act No. 174 of June 1, 1949) for repeatedly refusing collective bargaining with the union and for failing to pay wages to a union member.

(Unfair Labor Practices)

Article 7. The employer shall not commit the acts listed in any of the following items:

(i) to discharge or otherwise treat in a disadvantageous manner a worker by reason of such worker’s being a member of a labor union, having tried to join or organize a labor union, or having performed justifiable acts of a labor union; or to make it a condition of employment that the worker shall not join or shall withdraw from a labor union. However, where a labor union
represents a majority of workers employed at a particular factory or workplace, this shall not preclude an employer from concluding a collective agreement which requires, as a condition of employment, that the workers shall be members of such labor union;

(ii) to refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of the workers employed by the employer without justifiable reasons;

Also see: Tozen ALTs Sue Muhammed Ali Muhammed Mustafa For Unpaid Wages

Are you an ALT working for Max Ali (AKA Muhammed Ali Muhammed Mustafa), Japan Advanced Labor Agency, or Japan Advanced Labor Staff Services (AKA JALSS)? Only if you are are a member of a trade union do you have the legal right to collectively bargain with your employer to improve your working conditions. Join Tozen ALTs today!

小学校英語どうなる：打ち合わせは「偽装請負」？　指導助手活用できず　業務委託、派遣で問題

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目の前にＡＬＴ（外国語指導助手）がいても、教諭は授業の打ち合わせができない。授業中の指示も禁止。すべてＡＬＴを派遣している請負業者とファクスなどを使ったやりとりでしか伝えられない－－。

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Japanese women stand low on corporate ladder 25 yrs after law change

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Twenty five years have passed since the Equal Employment Opportunity Law for Men and Women was enacted to fight gender inequality at the workplace. By this time, people might think that a horde of college-educated women are calling the shots as corporate managers. But the latest Kyodo News survey shows that is hardly the case.

Of Japan’s 110 major corporations polled, 107 said it is important to use women’s talents, but women who are small section heads account for an average of a mere 5.4 percent of the total number of those holding that title. Of the total number of managers heading larger departments, women made up 2.5 percent. The figure goes down further to 1.7 percent for women corporate executives. In contrast, around 40 percent of corporate managers are women in other advanced countries, such as the United States and Germany.

The Japanese government has set a goal of boosting the percentage of women in managerial or other leadership positions to 30 percent by 2020, but Japanese companies appear to be less enthusiastic about the idea. Asked to give the percentages of women they want to see in managerial positions, the corporate respondents said an average of 18.6 percent for section chiefs, 15.4 percent for department heads and 14.4 percent for executives.

Still, out of this year’s new hires holding fast-track positions for managerial posts, an average of 27.7 percent were women.

Companies do want to employ more women because they are in desperate need of highly skilled workers because the country’s working population is shrinking. But the poll results suggest that there is still a widespread notion that business management is a man’s job. On the other hand, a significant number of firms want female workers to do more to improve the fortunes of employers.

Asked what they want out of female employees, 27 firms said they want women to reform their companies, and 22 said they hope to see female workers make more use of traits unique to women. Of the companies that find female employees somewhat wanting, 28 said women should acquire a broader perspective, 13 said women should be more flexible and 12 said they do not want them to quit early.

Commenting on the poll results, Professor Takashi Kashima, a gender studies expert at Jissen Women’s University, argues that there is a misconception among companies that women do not possess a broad perspective and are less flexible compared with their male colleagues. ”If they really want female workers to engineer reform, corporate managers should do more to give women their say,” he said.

Following the enforcement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in April 1986, further legislative reform and in-house changes at companies have done a lot to put men and women on a more equal footing. Still, women remain quite disadvantaged when it comes to obtaining secure employment.

Nonregular workers, who enjoy little job security, have become a serious social issue and male temps sacked by manufacturers have drawn much public attention over the past several years. Government statistics show, however, that some 70 percent of nonregular workers are women and the percentage has remained more or less the same for more than 20 years. Asked why many of their female employees are nonregular workers, 72 firms said women have difficulty holding down jobs as regular staff for a long period of time because they need to raise children. A total of 59 said the odds are against women seeking regular employment if they have quit their jobs in the past.

Many corporate respondents also said it is quite rare for temporary workers, who work as office clerks, an occupation usually associated with women, to become regular employees. Those who have gained regular work status tend to be workers who possess specialized skills and have worked full time at given companies for several years.

The situation for working women appears to be improving as public concern has grown recently about the need to help women keep their jobs while starting a family. Against this backdrop, 75 percent of the corporate respondents said they are implementing some measures to help regular female workers with children. Also, 65 percent have instituted a system that grants nonregular female staff regular employee status.

The poll results amply demonstrate that corporate managers are aware that they are no longer in a position to rely solely on male employees, says Jissen Women’s University’s Kashima. ”The survey shows that a large proportion of companies deem it important to utilize the talents of women on the grounds of gender equality, and that says much about the growth over the past quarter of a century of public understanding about the ideals upheld by the Equal Employment Opportunity Law,” he said. Still, much has to be done to promote the career advancement of women and make it easier for them to stay in the workforce to utilize their potential, Kashima added.

The Kyodo poll was conducted on top managers or executives in charge of employment matters at 110 companies between late July and early August.

http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstStory/index.php?storyid=519976

A less-than-desirable ALTernative

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An increasing number of primary schools are using assistant language teachers to teach English to children ahead of new regulations [making English education at primary schools compulsory] that go into effect in spring.

However, most of these ALTs are supplied by third-party businesses, a fact that can lead to less-than-desirable situations in class.

In Kashiwa, public schools do not directly employ foreign teachers, instead contracting third parties to supply them. One reason for this is cost-cutting.

However, when using such ALTs, teachers are not permitted to directly instruct their assistants.

In April, a teacher asked an ALT to place cards on the blackboard. Though on the surface this may seem a harmless request, the Chiba Labor Bureau demanded the school instruct its teachers to not ask anything of the ALTs, as it would be considered an order, and making the use of a third-party appear as mere camouflage.

Following the order, the school opted for the safest approach: banning all conversation between teachers and ALTs during class.

“This was the best way for us to give our children the opportunity to hear and use natural English,” said one Kashiwa City Board of Education official. The city says it plans to improve the situation after the next school year.

Kashiwa is not alone: Many local governments use third-party ALTs. Other local labor bureaus, too, have cited problems regarding the system.

Starting next spring, English will be compulsory for fifth- and sixth-graders, though they will not be graded on their performance.

The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry recommends that schools use ALTs whose mother tongue is English so students can improve their communication skills by familiarizing themselves with natural English.

Few schoolteachers are considered proficient in English, a situation that has increased the desire for native ALTs.

Throughout the country, local education boards are working hard to secure a sufficient number of ALTs.

A spokesperson for one intermediary said: “We receive requests for ALTs, but the fact is, sometimes we have to turn the request down because we don’t have enough.”

Compounding the situation is the fact that ALTs are not required to have teaching experience or qualifications, meaning the quality of ALT depends entirely on the company through which they are contracted. And few ALTs are proficient in Japanese.

Tokyo’s Adachi Ward Board of Education stopped using ALTs at primary schools last school year, but began employing Japanese teachers who speak fluent English.

“Even if [an ALT] is a native speaker, it’s difficult to teach if they can’t communicate. We can’t get enough ALTs who are good at Japanese,” one board official said.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/T100815001255.htm

Nissan to give temps some stability

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Nissan Motor Co. will forgo using job-placement agencies and start directly hiring all temporary nonengineering staff in phases beginning in October in an apparent effort to provide employment stability to workers in line with a labor office request, company officials said Wednesday.

Nissan’s move may spur other companies to rethink their hiring practices, analysts say, although Toyota and Honda say they have no current plans to follow suit.

Employees hired directly are given more job security than those hired via placement agencies and are eligible for more benefits.

Last year, the Tokyo Labor Bureau demanded that the carmaker improve its employment practice for workers sent by staffing agencies.

Nissan will no longer receive nonengineering workers from those agencies and will change the status of several hundred to direct employment if they wish.

It will offer new six-month contracts that would be extended up to two years and 11 months, as judicial precedents make it difficult to terminate contracts with employees hired for three years or longer, they said.

Acting on a complaint filed by two temps who demanded that Nissan hire them directly, the labor bureau told the company in May last year to provide its staff more job security.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20100819a3.html

Nissan to phase out temp worker positions in favor of contract jobs

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Nissan Motor Co. said it plans to phase out clerical positions filled by temporary workers and replace them with contract positions beginning in October.

The automaker apparently made the decision after it was instructed by the Tokyo Labor Bureau to improve its employment practices in accordance with the Worker Dispatching Law.

Currently, there are around 1.3 million people engaged in clerical work as temporary staff in Japan, and the unfair treatment of these workers often provokes controversy nationwide. The government will debate a bill to revise the worker dispatch law during the extraordinary Diet session this autumn, and the move by one of the nation’s leading car manufacturers is likely to affect other companies.

According to the automaker’s public relations department, currently some 700 to 800 individuals are working at Nissan as clerical staff on a temporary basis. Nissan has decided to stop accepting more temporary workers, who are usually dispatched by staffing agencies. Instead, the car maker has already started recruiting new contract employees. The contract period for the direct employment will not exceed two years and 11 months, as it often becomes difficult for an employer to terminate the contract unilaterally after three years.

Nissan started increasing the number of temporary staff from the mid-2000s. However, it came under fire for firing thousands of dispatched workers in manufacturing and administrative divisions following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the autumn of 2008.

In May last year, the company was instructed by the labor bureau to improve its employment practices after it hired temporary workers offering false working conditions. In an attempt to use dispatched workers beyond the legally permitted contract terms for temporary staff employed as general labor, Nissan told these workers that they would be assigned specialized jobs not covered by the term limits.

According to the source close to the problem, the company has tightened controls over temporary workers after it attracted the attention of the labor authority.

“We observe the laws; however, certain practices can be regarded unlawful in some cases. It’s difficult to know how we should understand this gray area,” a company spokesperson commented.

Meanwhile, Nissan has yet to explain how it will treat those who are already working in temporary positions at the company. There are mounting concerns that the move merely means another discharge of temporary workers.

Lawyer and labor issue expert Ichiro Natsume pointed out: “Companies had taken advantage of temporary workers, for whom they did not need to assume any responsibilities or obligations. However, due to stricter regulations, they apparently have lost interest in the hiring method. A revision to the Worker Dispatching Law will encourage more companies to follow Nissan’s lead.”

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100818p2a00m0na018000c.html

Screeners question if benefits outweigh the costs

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Concerns are growing over the future of a public program to dispatch foreign teachers to Japanese public schools as a key administrative reform panel has urged the government-linked body that runs the program to drastically cut its overall budget.

But government officials in charge of the operating body told The Japan Times recently the recommendation is unlikely to lead to direct budget cuts for the 23-year-old Japan Exchange and Teaching program, in which the central and local governments dispatch assistant language teachers to public high schools nationwide with public money.

“We don’t regard the results of ‘jigyo shiwake’ (budget screening) as a clear and immediate request to cut the budget of the JET program,” said Takashi Endo of the international division of the internal affairs ministry’s Local Administration Bureau.

Jigyo shiwake is the Democratic Party of Japan-led administration’s project to cut down on wasteful spending by the government and government-backed special organizations.

Municipalities will determine the number of teachers to be dispatched under the JET program, Endo added.

In a summary by a working group of the budget-cutting panel in May, one member recommended the JET program, run by the government-backed Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR), be fundamentally reformed.

Other group members’ comments ranged from one calling for the program to be reassessed, along with how its costs should be covered, and by what source, to one member saying the JET program is unnecessary and another calling its significance unclear.

The panel may not have final say, but its comments are expected to strongly influence the final decision by top officials of the internal affairs ministry on funding requests for the next fiscal year.

CLAIR’s ¥3.6 billion budget to promote international exchange programs is shared by the 47 prefectures and 19 major cities, including ¥858 million for the JET program, in the current fiscal year.

The jigyo shiwake mainly targets wasteful spending by the central government. But the panel leveled criticism at CLAIR and the JET program, noting local governments receive vast grants and many former senior central government officials have landed lucrative positions at CLAIR after retirement in the practice known as “amakudari.”

However critical, the panel didn’t recommend a specific funding cut for the JET program.

Instead, the panel’s focus appeared to be on non-JET-related operations of CLAIR, including its seven overseas offices and wages paid to amakudari ex-bureaucrats.

In their summary, many panel members said CLAIR’s seven overseas offices are unneeded and should be closed.

An official of the Cabinet Revitalization Unit, which runs the jigyo shiwake budget-cutting project, said it will leave funding for the JET program and CLAIR in the hands of the internal affairs ministry.

For this fiscal year, there are 4,436 JET program participants, of whom 2,537 are Americans, 481 are Canadians and 390 are British. Of the total, 4,063 are assistant language teachers (ALTs). Participants peaked at 6,273 in 2002 and have since been decreasing.

CLAIR will start asking municipalities in November how many ALTs they will need for the next fiscal year, and submit a budget draft to the internal affairs ministry in February as per its usual practice, CLAIR spokesman Sadami Mie said.

The ministry will also query municipalities about their ALT needs but won’t be involved in coming up with the CLAIR budget until the group submits its draft in February, Endo of the ministry said.

While acknowledging that CLAIR’s operations, including its foreign offices, need to be reassessed, he stressed the importance of the JET program.

The CLAIR foreign offices engage in activities to promote the internationalization of municipalities, not recruiting JET teachers from the U.S. and Britain. Japanese embassies do that job.

“We should review what needs to be reviewed (about CLAIR). But we want to keep the JET program,” he said.

Lower House member Manabu Terada, who headed the budget-cutting working group scrutinizing the CLAIR budget, told The Japan Times that the ministry is not fit to oversee the JET program, hinting the Foreign Ministry may be more suitable because the program helps nurture foreigners’ understanding of Japan and promotes international exchanges.

When it was established 23 years ago, JET’s mission was the promotion of municipalities’ international exchanges, and the internal affairs ministry became the supervising body because it oversees municipalities.

But Terada said some municipalities don’t need the program because they can hire ALTs from staffing companies.

“The way CLAIR is operated needs to be overhauled,” Terada said, adding he doesn’t think the JET program is unnecessary.

For another ministry to start up a program similar to JET, the process would be time-consuming and entail lengthy cross-ministry discussions, he said.

Kanagawa Prefecture arranges for agencies to deploy assistant language teachers instead of relying solely on the JET program, which would require it to pay a net ¥3.6 million annual salary to an ALT.

A JET assistant language teacher works full time at a public high school, allowing interaction with kids in school events outside of class hours.

Local governments can save money by tapping ALT-staffing agencies, having ALTs work shorter hours and paying them by the hour. But deep cultural and human exchanges can’t be expected via such arrangements, experts say.

“We wouldn’t say the JET program is unnecessary, but we need to consider costs as well,” Kanagawa prefectural official Mayumi Kawaguchi said. “We want CLAIR to be more efficient.”

Kanagawa, which has 143 public high schools, now hires 10 ALTs via JET, down from the peak of 46 from 2002 to 2004, prefectural official Kyoko Sakurada said. The prefecture began hiring ALTs through an agency in 2006.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100811f2.html

英語助手と先生、授業協力したら違法　契約巡り現場混乱

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英語の授業中、外国語指導助手（ＡＬＴ）と日本人教員が言葉を交わさない――。ＡＬＴを業者への業務委託（請負）で確保する自治体で、奇妙な授業風景が繰り広げられている。２人が協力して授業に取り組むと「偽装請負」（労働者派遣法違反）となってしまうからだ。ルールを守れずに労働局から指導を受ける教育委員会が相次ぎ、教室で混乱が起きている。

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Income Gap Wider As Irregular Workers Rise: Labor Ministry

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Japan’s income gap is widening as companies are hiring more irregular workers, the Labor Ministry said Tuesday in its fiscal 2010 report on the country’s labor market.

The ministry noted that companies were prompted to hire more irregular workers in light of eased regulations on labor dispatch service.

The number of workers earning an annual salary of 1-2.5 million yen was in particular on the increase over the decade through 2007, according to the ministry’s latest White Paper on the Labour Economy.

In the 2000s, the ratio of irregular workers, including those dispatched from manpower agencies, grew at a faster clip, with the ratio now accounting for more than 30% of the country’s overall labor force.

This is mainly attributed to the fact that “Major firms, hoping to curtail personnel costs, expanded the hiring of irregular workers over those on a regular payroll,” the white paper says.

The ministry suggested in the paper that it is imperative for employers to turn irregular workers into permanent employees, so employers can provide higher wages and ensure stable job conditions.

Meanwhile, the number of those fresh from university and college having difficulty finding a job has also increased lately, with hiring appetite souring at firms.

“It is necessary for companies seeking sustainable management to make viable recruitment plans without being affected by short-term economic trends,” the ministry said in the paper.

http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20100803D03SS588.htm

自治体財政難、ＡＬＴ直接雇用激減　労使トラブルも

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小中学校や高校に配置され子供の国際理解を手助けする外国語指導助手（ＡＬＴ）。厳しい財政事情を背景に、自治体による直接雇用が減り、民間企業を通じた派遣や業務委託が増えている。一方、元ＡＬＴの英国人男性が、ＡＬＴ関連としては県内で初めて県労働委員会に不当労働行為の救済を申し立てて、２０日に証人尋問が行われるなど、雇用をめぐるトラブルも表面化。自治体の直接雇用を求める声が上がっている。

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