経営破綻した英会話学校「ジオス」を今年４月に買収したジー・コミュニケーション（名古屋市）が、３年前に買収したＮＯＶＡも含めた英会話事業を売却していたことが４日分かった。
Eikaiwa
G. Communication Sells Nova, Geos
G. communication Co. has sold all of its shares in a unit that manages English language schools Nova and Geos, officials of the Japanese diversified business group said Monday.
The shares in G. education Co. were sold on Friday to an investment company headed by G. communication founder Masaki Inayoshi for an undisclosed sum.
Meager pay keeps ranks of instructors in doldrums
It may not be well-known, but [Japanese language instruction] has also been on the rise, with more people than ever trying to learn [the language]. But the number of Japanese who teach nonnative speakers isn’t growing, partly due to lack of interest among academic circles and the low pay at private language schools that derives in part from restrictions on management.
Some advocates stress the need to get the numbers up, as Japan is aging rapidly and reliance on an immigrant workforce is going to grow, thus it is important that newcomers be conversant in the language.
According to the education ministry, foreigners in the country studying Japanese increased to 170,858 in fiscal 2009 from 135,146 in fiscal 2003.
The number of Japanese-language teachers, excluding volunteers, dropped from 14,047 to 13,437 over the same period.
The trend is particularly noticeable at the nation’s universities. Foreign students studying Japanese at such institutions rose to 53,546 in fiscal 2009 from 34,880 four years earlier. Despite the jump, the number of teachers stayed almost unchanged, 4,250 last year versus 4,240 in fiscal 2003.
Satoshi Miyazaki, a professor at the graduate school of Japanese applied linguistics at Waseda University, said it is unfortunate teacher ranks are not growing. They should be boosted and put in positions of responsibility to enable a long-term commitment, otherwise, for example, universities would have a hard time improving their programs for international students.
The slow growth in Japanese teachers is shared by private language academies. Such commercial entities had 5,947 teachers and 50,479 students in fiscal 2003, compared with 5,959 teachers and 53,047 students in fiscal 2009.
“One reason for the lack of Japanese teachers is because it’s not a well-paid job,” said Nobuo Suzuki, who manages Arc Academy, a Japanese-language school with several branches in the Tokyo and Kansai areas.
Suzuki explained that about 80 percent of his teachers work part time and most are women.
The hourly wage is about ¥1,700 to ¥1,800 for new part-time teachers, who can only teach around three hours a week when they start out. Their hours can go up every three months and the part-time wage can rise to about ¥2,500.
An experienced teacher makes on average ¥7,000 to ¥8,000 a day.
Suzuki said full-time teachers with 10 years of experience earn about ¥4 million a year.
The meager pay means few young people, especially men, want to become Japanese-language teachers, people in the field say.
Yumiko Furukawa, a full-time teacher at Arc Academy who has been in the game for four years, said the high turnover rate — teachers last an average of only two years — is mainly because of wages.
“It is quite difficult to support an entire household by teaching Japanese, but there are many who love teaching Japanese, and I think Japanese-language teaching is supported by their passion,” said Furukawa, 41, whose husband also works so she doesn’t have to rely on just her wages.
[Makoto Murakami, head of the editorial department at the monthly magazine Gekkan Nihongo (Monthly Japanese)] Murakami likened Japanese-language teachers to nurses and caregivers.
“The number of people who will need caregivers will increase sharply, but the number of caregivers doesn’t grow because the job conditions aren’t very good,” and if the situation doesn’t change there won’t be enough Japanese teachers, even though the number of foreigners is likely to keep increasing, Murakami said.
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.
Uniqlo chief Yanai calls on Japan to internationalize, accept immigration
The positive sides to immigration are enormous, as immigrants would both increase the population and stimulate the economy. If Japanese come into everyday contact with foreigners from childhood, it would also help alleviate Japanese people’s distaste for internationalization. Europe, the U.S. and all the other advanced nations in the world accept immigrants. As the economy grows more globalized, this is not an age when Japan can get along with Japanese people only.
We are making all Japanese staff at our headquarters and all employees at store manager level or higher study English to the point they can get a TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) score of at least 700 points in the next two years. (A perfect score is 990.) The number of our foreign employees is rising, English will be made Fast Retailing’s official language in fiscal 2012, and we are aiming to globalize company management.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100724p2a00m0na003000c.html
All shuttered Geos schools to reopen for lessons in May
G.communication Co., which has taken over collapsed English conversation school operator Geos Corp., plans to resume lessons at all Geos schools by the end of May, the company president said.
This means lessons will resume soon at 18 of the 230 Geos schools that were closed for falling behind in their rent payments and for other reasons as of Wednesday.
In an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun, G.communication President Hideo Sugimoto said he hopes to return Geos to the black within a year.
“I want to record a profit in a year from now, although there still are costs that may materialize later,” he said.
G.communication also took over the Nova English conversation school when it went belly-up in 2007, but Sugimoto plans to maintain both brands.
“Geos schools have Japanese teachers and beginners may find it easier to take lessons there, whereas all Nova teachers are native speakers. Each has its own advantages and devotees,” he said.
The firm plans to maintain, for the time being, the 230 Geos schools it took over.
If some schools have difficulty resuming lessons, G.communication will help them out by renting rooms in neighboring buildings and taking other measures, Sugimoto said.
G.com has more room for ex-Geos teachers
G.communication Co. will hire some teachers from schools that it isn’t taking over from defunct Geos Corp. because it is currently experiencing a manpower shortage, G.communication President Hideo Sugimoto told The Japan Times on Wednesday.
“Some teachers left (the Geos schools) we took over because they weren’t getting paid,” Sugimoto said in an interview in G.communication’s Tokyo office.
Sugimoto said he doesn’t know how many teachers his company will hire from the Geos schools that will be shut down. G.communication has already said it will keep all of the employees at Geos schools it is taking over.
Nagoya-based G.communication runs language conversation schools, cram schools and restaurants.
Geos will close 99 English-language schools that employ 483 teachers and staff, while G.communication will take over 230 schools that employ 1,059. The company reopened 201 Geos schools last Friday, just three days after Geos filed for bankruptcy with the Tokyo District Court.
It will reopen the remaining 29 as soon as landlords of the branches sign rent contracts, Sugimoto said.
Former Geos employees will first enter work contracts with G.education, an education arm of G.communication, for three months, as had been the style with Geos, and then will sign a contract based on G.education’s style of employment, in which popular teachers get to teach more hours and are paid more, Sugimoto said.
Sugimoto also stressed that the chaos at the time of the failure of Nova Corp., another major language school chain, will not be repeated because of his company’s speedy rescue of Geos. G.communication took over operations of some Nova schools in November 2007.
“People may be worried because of the experience with Nova. In Nova’s case, we took over some of their schools awhile after the company went bankrupt and we had to start in a situation where more than 1,000 teachers didn’t have places to work,” Sugimoto said.
“This time, we raised our hand (to rescue Geos) at an early time,” he said. “If it was a week later, it would have been more chaotic.”
He also said he hadn’t been intending to expand in the language education business, and this move was just the result of salvaging a failed company.
He is also confident of making the former Geos schools profitable in a year, saying G.education will offer better services, such as convenient lesson-booking methods, than rival firms.
“The (English conversation school) market may be shrinking, but there are needs and we will meet customers’ needs,” he said.
At Nova schools, the teacher-to-student ratio is 1-to-3.5, which is “just right,” he said. He will aim to achieve that for Geos schools, whose current ratio is 1-to-2.6, he said.
Geos’ bankruptcy is believed to be tied to its persistent’s attempts at expansion, flying in the face of industry figures that showed the English-teaching market was shrinking amid the economic slump.
According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the monthly number of students enrolled at foreign-language conversation schools plunged from 826,858 in February 2006 to 335,604 in February this year. The corresponding monthly sales figures for the industry over the same period fell from ¥17.2 billion to ¥5.7 billion.
Classes resume at 200 Geos schools
G.communication Co., which has taken over 230 of 329 schools run by collapsed English conversation school operator Geos Corp., resumed classes at 201 Geos schools nationwide Friday.
Classes at the remaining schools will restart soon, according to G.communication.
The phone was ringing off the hook at one Geos school in Tokyo, where classes resumed at 10 a.m., as students sought information about class schedules and made other inquiries. A female staffer manning the phone was still coming to grips with the events of recent days.
“I’d heard some schools would close, but I never expected the company would go under,” she said. “I also heard that we’ll keep our jobs, so I really don’t know what’s going on.”
Meanwhile, Mizuho Fukushima, state minister in charge of consumer affairs, said after a Cabinet meeting Friday, “We’ll keep an eye on developments so students can take classes without concern.”
Nagoya-based G.communication said students at 99 Geos schools that will be shut down can take classes at other schools taken over by the company if they waive the right to receive a repayment of their tuition fees.
However, Fukushima said she hoped G.communication would provide more details about its plans.
“Some students might regret waiving the right to receive a refund because they live some distance from other schools, or for other reasons,” Fukushima said.
Geos filed for bankruptcy at the Tokyo District Court on Wednesday.
Geos’ fate sealed by failure to react quickly to rapid drop in demand
The failure of major language-school operator Geos Corp. occurred because the company didn’t trim unprofitable branches fast enough at a time when the industry was facing a drastic drop in students, people in the industry said.
Although the bankruptcy of industry leader Nova Corp. in October 2007 damaged the image of the commercial language school industry, the impact this time is likely to be contained somewhat by the swift response of G.communication Co., another language chain that has offered to take over about two-thirds of Geos’ branches.
“I think the biggest factor was the decline in students,” said Masami Sakurabayashi, director of the Japan Association for the Promotion of Foreign Language Education, a Tokyo-based organization that promotes sound management of foreign-language schools. Geos, the second major language school to fail in the past three years, is not a member of the group.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said enrollment at foreign-language schools has plunged from 826,858 students in February 2006 to 335,604 this year.
In its attempt to catch Nova, Geos expanded rapidly only to be caught high and dry by the plunge in student enrollment after Nova imploded, and was probably unable to trim unprofitable branches fast enough, Sakurabayashi said.
G.communication Co., which took over some Nova branches, will take over 230 Geos schools and close 99. Geos boasted about 500 branches during its heyday, while Nova had about 900.
“Rapid expansion is very risky with this business because it is hard to maintain quality service,” Sakurabayashi said, referring to the distrust created by Nova, which collapsed after being penalized by the government for misleading advertising.
The language industry has been in decline for the past several years due to Japan’s economic malaise, the global financial crisis and the fallout from Nova’s bankruptcy.
According to Tokyo-based Yano Research Institute Ltd., sales in the industry fell from ¥826 billion in fiscal 2005 to ¥767 billion in fiscal 2008.
But the failure of yet another major chain doesn’t mean the industry is hopeless, some said.
Running a language school chain is manageable if you don’t make the mistake of expanding too rapidly, Sakurabayashi said.
“This is my personal opinion, but running foreign language schools is a profitable business, although you may not make such a huge profit,” he said, adding that the key is to have a realistic goal.
Atsushi Hamai, a spokesman for the major school chain Aeon Corp., said that while it’s true that new enrollment has been in decline for the past several years, the industry is recovering and the company has not seen much fluctuation in its sales and operating profit.
“When Nova was expanding its presence about 10 years ago, we did put a focus on establishing new branches,” Hamai said. “But we think that increasing the number of branches is not the way our company should go, so we hardly create new schools now. Our strategy is not expansion, but to strengthen the inside.”
Some fear that Geos’ collapse and subsequent bad press will give the entire industry a black eye.
“I’m concerned that this issue might bring negative influence to the industry,” said Kunio Hatanaka, head of the All Japan Linguistics Association, another organization of foreign language school operators that included Geos.
“There are many schools that run healthy businesses and try hard to serve customers,” he said.
But the impact is likely to be smaller compared with Nova, Sakurabayashi said, thanks to the aggressive moves of G.communication.