Fingerprint scheme exposes xenophobic, short-sighted trend in government
As Japan sinks into elderly obsolescence and threatens to retire to the economic backwaters, it needs more openness, not less. Yet our leaders insult [non-Japanese] residents by calling them names and policing them further. Not to mention the purposeful xenophobes, capitalizing on a complicated world, who whip up public fear of foreign terrorism and crime. The nation is being run by people out of sync with Japan’s present and future, who won’t live to see the full extent of the damage they are wreaking anyway.
We cannot expect people like these to lead us to a world they cannot envision. Neither Japanese citizens, nor the international residents who plight their troth here, deserve this fate. At the very least Japan needs a change in leadership. Knock the LDP from its half-century in power, for starters.
As for the media, let’s have a pro-gaijin campaign for a change.
‘Eikaiwa’ firms face Nova fallout
Too big, too fast, and with too little quality ? that’s the consensus view of many industry analysts on former language-school market leader Nova Corp., whose collapse left over 420,000 students and 4,000 non-Japanese instructors without an “eikaiwa” home.
The Nova affair has already hurt many people: Hundreds of instructors have had to leave Japan and many of those who stayed are struggling to get by ? the National Union of General Workers has even set up a “meals for English lessons” deal to help teachers and students. Meanwhile, customers who paid up-front fees to Nova are struggling to regain some of their substantial losses.
After Nova filed for bankruptcy with some ¥43.9 billion in debt, preparatory school operator G.communication took over some of its schools and rehired less than half of Nova’s former employees.
According to industry observers, shock waves from the crash are likely to be felt across the whole industry ? which employs a sizable percentage of Japan’s expat community ? and beyond.
Nippon Keidanren backs wage hikes, raises concerns on take-home pay
The country’s most powerful business lobby plans to accept pay raises at high performing companies under a set of management guidelines for the 2008 annual spring labor offensive, sources said.
It will be the fourth straight year for Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) to back wage hikes in the spring offensive, known as shunto.
In a draft report on the guidelines by the Committee on Management and Labor Policy, the business group stressed the necessity of pay hikes in a stronger tone than before by referring to concerns about household budgets for the first time.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200712070090.html
Nippon Keidanren to urge members to offer wage hike
The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) likely will call on employers to offer wage increases in next year’s spring labor offensive as many major companies are raking in record profits, according to a draft position paper obtained by The Yomiuri Shimbun.
The country’s most influential business group will urge its about 1,300 member companies to funnel extra funds generated by improved productivity and falling labor costs arising from the mass retirement of baby boomers back into personnel expenses.
Nippon Keidanren’s Management and Labor Policy Committee is preparing the position paper, which will be released in mid-December after approval by its directors. The paper is nonbinding for employers, but it serves as the basis for their positions in annual wage negotiations with labor unions.
The draft paper stipulates, “A portion of an increase in added value, which has been supported by the steady improvement of productivity, shall be used as capital for revising total personnel costs [total salaries and other payments given to workers].”
“Revising the total personnel costs” apparently means “wage increase.” The draft paper says this is “to improve employees’ incentive to work” and “to secure human resources.”
The latest wording represents a change in tack over the past few years by Nippon Keidanren.
The group’s basic policy in its paper for 2005 spring labor offensive stated that “raising the wage level is difficult.” But the paper for 2006 said, “It shall be up to the management and labor of each company to make any such decision,” which could be taken to mean the organization accepted a wage increase by employers.
Its paper for 2007, however, stated, “Short-term results obtained by companies’ good performance should be reflected in bonuses and other lump-sum allowances.” This still illustrated Nippon Keidanren’s cautious recognition that an increase in company profits were rather short-term and temporary.
According to Shinko Research Institute Co., more than 30 percent of companies listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange likely will post record current profits for fiscal 2007.
Companies should be able to trim labor costs as workers of the baby-boomer generation, who were receiving high salaries, reach retirement age. Meanwhile, an increasing number of companies are raising starting salaries to attract talented staff.
These conditions apparently prompted Nippon Keidanren to take a more positive stance toward a wage increase. This could spur labor unions to press more strongly to have their demands accepted during wage negotiations next year.
However, Nippon Keidanren’s draft still maintains its basic policy that any wage increase should be decided by the management and labor of each company. It is uncertain whether many companies will offer a wage increase because the economic recovery has yet to trickle down to small and midsize companies and regional economies, industry observers said.
“It is outdated thinking to ignore the ability of each company to pay salaries and raise the pay-scale across the industry,” states the draft paper, which also maintains that temporary improvement in business performance should be reflected in bonuses and other lump-sum allowances.
Those comments suggest Nippon Keidanren gave due consideration to the growing risk emerging in the performance of not only small and midsize companies but also large companies.
Concern over an economic slowdown has been growing in the United States, the largest importer of Japanese products, due to the subprime mortgage loan turmoil. This anxiety has been compounded by a surge in material prices caused by high oil prices, which is starting to squeeze the earnings of Japanese companies.
“There are many sources of concern for the economy, such as the yen’s rise against the dollar and surging oil prices,” said Junko Sakuyama, an economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. “It’s difficult to expect that a wage increase is a foregone conclusion in next year’s spring labor offensive.”
English teachers say sayonara to a not-so-super Nova
TEACHING English in Japan: a working holiday in a truly strange and different country (to those of us not Japanese); getting paid for talking your own language in a classroom; spare time and funds for culture in Kyoto, night-clubbing in Shinjuku, deep powder snow around Nagano. Or whatever.
It seems so cool and out-there — at least before Nova Corp went belly-up on October 26 — that it’s faintly surprising there hasn’t been a big travellers’ novel out of it, or a quirky movie.
The reality is more raw, though. An artist that The Australian spoke to, but who asked not to be identified, came to work while gathering material and studying Japanese techniques but left sick and angry, he says, because of his experiences as a Nova English instructor.
Sydneysider Natasha Steele arrived almost 10 months ago, planning on a year’s stay. One of 900-odd Australians aboard when Nova went down, she was a short-termer, but no dilettante.
“I was a bit discontented (in Australia), I wanted to do something different, more fulfilling, and before I came here I took the CELTAC (Cambridge English Language Teaching of Adults Certificate); that alone cost me $3000,” says the 26-year-old marine science and management graduate.
“I wanted to make a difference — if Japanese people wanted to learn English, then I wanted to help them the best I could to do that.”
Steele was broke after university and now she’s broke again. She’s making the best of her remaining stay here by campaigning for just treatment of about 4000 foreign instructors and 2000 Japanese staff stranded by the collapse. “I just don’t want to end up regretting my time here.”
Nor does Bob Tench, an Englishman who taught at a Nova school in Shinjuku and who now heads the National Union of General Workers’ Nova division. His life is here; he came in 1994 and recently married a local woman.
Tench claims that once he became active in the union, in response to worsening work conditions, Nova management retaliated with tougher teaching schedules and the annual threat of losing his job and visa: all the instructors are on one-year contracts.
Another Nova technique was to extract advance-paid tuition fees; amounts for the contracts valid over three years varied between Y600,000 and Y900,000 (about $5740 to $8570) according to a recent Ministry of Economy Trade Industry report.
More than 300,000 adult students and parents were caught short by the collapse.
Those people are now variously reported to be owed between Y40 and Y70 billion. The court-appointed administrators refused to comment. G.communications, a small operator, has undertaken to rehabilitate part of the business but won’t pick up the fees liability.
The instructors’ view of the proposal is summed up by a posting on the website LetsJapan.org. “Jobs or the same old shit?”
There are no verifiable figures available, but Kyodo news agency, quoting “sources”, claims that in the event of a full liquidation, the final deficiency could be Y98.5 billion.
The Japan Association for the Promotion of Foreign Language, claiming to represent most of the substantial language schools (but not Nova, which till recently constituted about half the total industry) advises members to charge no more than a year in advance. The Australian randomly checked three; they were charging advance fees for courses between 15 and 27 months. Nozomu Sahashi, the 56-year-old former president, founded Nova in 1981 with Anders Lundqvist, a Swede who became education director.
He proceeded to revolutionise commercial language business here.
As well as classrooms and face-to-face tuition, Nova offered remote teaching, flexible hours, aggressive price discounting and in recent years its branches mushroomed crazily.
It slogan was ekimae ryuugakku, “study overseas, in front of (every) train station”.
Earlier this year, there were 914 branches, though the number by October had plunged to 670.
Nova’s promotional spending was also phenomenal. The pink Nova-Usagi (Nova Bunny) became one of this brand-obsessed nation’s most recognisable commercial symbols. METI estimates 1.1 million people pay fees for English lessons annually, mostly, in effect, for remedial teaching.
Nova’s foreigners were not usually teachers per se, but graduates of many types on working holidays, paying off student loans, or in search of Japanese experiences. They were, relatively speaking, cheap labour and Nova cut corners to make them cheaper.
Though inevitably some decided to settle in Japan, most looked to stay a year or so. Short-stayers were generally less concerned than permanents like Tench about conditions such as statutory social insurance (which Nova was reluctant to pay, unless to an associated company that has also now gone under).
The standard pre-tax salary recently for foreign instructors was Y250,000 (about $2350 monthly), less Y66,000 for a rented, shared apartment (teachers could make their own arrangements but were encouraged to use housing organised by Nova).
Discipline of Japanese and foreign staff was strictly enforced and associations between teachers and students beyond the classroom were prohibited.
“They were advertising us as the attraction and then forbidding us to mix socially,” says a former instructor. “I accept that some foreigners’ behaviour left plenty to be desired, but when we’d go out for a meal or a drink, mostly it was the students asking to join us.”
Unionism also was discouraged by Nova management — though not overtly, because that’s against the law — and teachers who did join up say they were singled out for tougher schedules and sometimes sent to more distant branches.
High turnover was sustained by a big, continuous recruitment effort: Nova had offices for that purpose in Australia, the US, Canada and Britain and New Zealand. In Australia, the Brisbane office’s efforts were supplemented by a Melbourne-based company, Australia Asia Centre for Education Exchange (AACE), which says it advised its fresh recruits to postpone or cancel departures once Nova began delaying instructors’ pay. AACE ended the relationship on October 1.
But Nova offices continued signing and sending people to the end. “The most shocking thing to me was they were still recruiting in Canada in the last weeks when they knew they couldn’t pay them,” said a Canadian official.
But the worm was in the apple well before then and the real problem was students, rather than teachers becoming leery of Nova.
For years, complaints had been mounting, mainly from people wanting to discontinue lessons but finding refunds extremely difficult to obtain. “English lessons are the kind of things people change their mind about, especially if they’ve bought three years’ worth,” says a financier who has studied the operation.
Nova Bunny notwithstanding, the brand was getting grubby and Nova’s market share fell from 51 to 47 per cent in 2005 and to 45 per cent last year — all amid the huge branch expansion.
As complaints mounted, shinpan credit companies — used by about 20 per cent of students to raise their up-front fees — started refusing to fund Nova contracts. In April the Supreme Court ruled Nova refund restrictions illegal and in June METI punished the company for lying in some promotions by closing off some courses to new students for six months.
Sahashi had run the business side of Nova almost manically single-handed, while Lundqvist managed the education operations, and suddenly Nova was being hit by blow after blow. Customers were peeling away and not being replaced so that by September, on one informed estimate, Nova was getting in Y1 for every Y4 walking out the door.
Reports documenting the company’s rise during the 1980s and 1990s had depicted the Nova crowd as youthfully innovative in their approach. A more forthcoming Sahashi then said he started the business because foreign backpackers were always sleeping on his floor. In the early days “the school was in a constant buzz and gave off a massive amount of energy”.
The picture gradually darkened, however. Sahashi’s private life and intra-office relationships were reported to have been hectic and the Nova image now fixed in the public mind is the ex-president’s office-cum-playhouse in Osaka.
More than 300 square metres, it was draped in scarlet velvet and scattered with stuffed Nova Bunnies. There was a traditional Japanese tea-room and the less-traditional double bed.
A week after the wrecked group went into administration, news crews were led tut-tutting through these quarters and that led all the commercial TV news that night.
Sahashi was annoyed that the administrators would use the executive floor to misrepresent “him using the company to benefit himself”. At least that’s what his lawyers said. Sahashi has refused to reveal himself since July, communicating with increasingly desperate staff by faxes, promising wages that arrived late and then not at all.
His lawyers asserted the former president’s chambers served as “as a model home office to demonstrate the advantages of such a space”. But Sahashi had a similar facility in Tokyo. It was “like a weird guy’s idea of a love hotel” said a recent visitor.
Lundqvist and his co-directors brought the farrago to an end, apparently losing faith in Sahashi’s claims he could raise Y4 billion — and then, soon, Y6 billion — to keep the show rolling. In his absence on October 25, they voted Sahashi out and next morning filed for administration.
The possibility of Lundqvist emerging in charge of a restructured Nova didn’t fill the teachers with joy. “He has been intimately involved in the way Nova has been run from the beginning,” says Tench. “He didn’t have perhaps the same trappings as president Sahashi — the Playboy Penthouse — but he knew everything that was going on so, so if the company acted improperly, he was part and parcel of that.”
Another former long-term teacher and unionist, Tristan Sime, says foreigners who rose under Lundqvist from teaching to supervisory positions were “cult-like” in their devotion to the company’s methods.
Lundqvist’s response? “I am sorry but I can’t talk to you now and I don’t have any comments for you, anyway. I will never be able to talk to you. Goodbye.”
A charming and forthright man, obviously, but could you trust him with your job?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22812113-23850,00.html
Nova faces long road back
With Monday marking one month since English-language school operator Nova Corp. filed for court protection, there is still no prospect of students receiving refunds on tuition fees and many Nova employees have chosen to leave their jobs.
G.communication Co., a Nagoya-based language-school operator, has taken over Nova operations and resumed offering lessons at 25 branches since Nov. 14, including the Kurokawa branch in Nagoya, which on Nov. 16 was the first to reopen.
The Hyogo-Koshien branch in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, on Sunday became the first to resume operations in the Kansai region, where the company was headquartered. Seven students attended lessons on the day.
A foreign instructor at the branch said, “I’m so glad we could start lessons again.”
One student said: “Lessons resumed sooner than I expected, so I’m relieved. But I hope the branch closest to my home, which I used to go to, will reopen soon.”
Four branches in Tokyo–including Akabane in Kita Ward and Katsushika-Koiwa in Edogawa Ward–will be shortly reopened.
G.communication plans to reopen about 80 branches by the end of December at the earliest. The firm hopes that within six months to one year from now, lessons will be offered at 200 branches.
Among about 4,900 Japanese employees and foreign instructors that worked for Nova, more than half are likely to be rehired by G.communication. About 70 percent of foreign instructors, many of whom have been forced into poverty due to Nova’s failure to pay their wages, are likely to accept job offers from G.communication.
“Many students were hard workers and I’m attached to them,” a 50-year-old Australian man who used to work at the Tennoji branch in Osaka said.
However, about half of Japanese employees, including executives of key departments, are expected to refuse G.communication’s offer and quit Nova.
G.communication is said to have used aggressive merger and acquisition techniques to expand its business. Former Nova President Nozomu Sahashi was known for his autocratic management style.
One former Nova executive who has refused the job offer from G.communication said, “[G.communication’s business style] reminds me of [Sahashi].”
When Nova filed for court protection, it had about 300,000 students. Many of them do not know whether they will be able to continue lessons.
Students can continue lessons, redeeming prepaid tuition points, if they pay an additional 25 percent of the standard tuition fee. However, not all 670 branches will be reopened.
Nova became hugely popular due to the convenient locations of its branches, advertised by the firm as offering “ekimae ryugaku” (studying near your train station). However, G.communication Chairman and President Masaki Inayoshi said, “We’ll maintain the ‘ekimae’ style, but we won’t be so picky about prime locations.”
Some students have claimed they will be unable continue lessons if branch locations are not as convenient as they were, and the number of students could drop depending on the locations of reopened branches.
In addition, it is unclear whether G.communication has the resources to manage branches across the nation.
Nova shares closed at 1 yen on the Jasdaq stock market Monday–the last day of Nova stock dealing–dropping from 2 yen at Thursday’s close.
The stock was valued at 6,610 yen just after it went public in November 1996, but from mid-September this year, when the firm was found to have delayed wage payments to its staff, the price hovered at about 50 yen.
Interac in the News
This is an archived post from the old General Union Interac Branch website, written by an undeclared union member (thus the nickname rather than the name):
Hi all. Corrector here.
Many of you may have seen this before through the original link on Let’s Japan earlier this year, but I wanted to highlight the story here as well. This report aired on NHK on June 30th, 2007. The first part covers a bit of NOVA (old NOVA that is, not neo/G.Communications/NOVA), and then the second part covers the hardships of some awesome people working as teachers in Chiba under the strangling gauntlet of Interac…
If anyone wants to volunteer to write an English transcript for those who may need/want it, feel free to send it my way and I will post it. Otherwise, you will either have to wait until I have the time, or just visit the aforementioned Let’s Japan entry to get all the details.
Kudos to Shawn for running a great blog/forum.
These videos originally posted and donated to us by several members who are in the video (which should give us plenty of rebroadcasting rights).
We will be posting more surveys, information and entertaining diatribe shortly so stay tuned…
Solidarity.
Gov’t must think hard about fingerprinting foreigners
Japan has started a new system obligating foreigners entering the country to provide their fingerprints and face photos. The United States started a similar process following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the government has gone along with this, revising the immigration law to make it obligatory for foreigners to take these steps.
Data collected from foreigners entering the country will be matched with that assembled on about 18,000 fugitives on Interpol and Japanese law enforcers’ lists, as well another roughly 800,000 who have previously been deported from Japan with the aim of preventing entry into the country for those who match the data.
The Justice Ministry insists that the measures are an anti-terrorism step and Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama created controversy with his statements about an associate in Al-Qaeda, and there are doubts about how effective this process will be. The system still makes it very difficult to capture terrorists who have no prior convictions and it is not possible to say that the government can adequately cover every port of entry, especially when it comes to those entering by sea and particularly those smuggled in.
Where the system will show its teeth is combating those entering illegally using false passports. Of the roughly 56,000 people deported from Japan last year, about 7,300 had been expelled from the country at least once before, including some foreigners who should never have been allowed into the country in the first place, and immigration authorities were widely criticized for their lax control. Immigration and law enforcers also had to suffer a backlash after it was learned that fugitive members of the Japanese Red Army had been sneaking in and out of Japan using false passports. But the new system should make it impossible for repeated re-entry into the country using false passports. The new system should also prove effective in countering the crime gangs who leave the country following raids, come back in again once things have calmed down and then flee once more.
Surrounded by water on all sides, immigration authorities obviously saw implementation of the current system as a task of great importance, but there are many things that need to be taken into account when considering this first attempt at halting crime by foreigners coming to Japan. To ease the problems associated with taking people’s fingerprints and keep the system in process, naturally clear explanations of the system are necessary and it goes without saying that steps must be taken to make sure the data collection process is spread up so that it does not become a burden on those foreigners entering the country.
The ministry must also clearly state the standards by which collected data will be preserved and handled. Going by what the ministry has said so far, the data collected will not be necessary if the person who presented it is not on any of the lists used for comparing it with. Even considering keeping the fingerprints and photos on file in case of trouble while the presenter is in the country, this data should be destroyed when the person leaves the country, or at least after a set period of time. There should be a set limit for how long this data can be kept. Considering that there have been many criticisms of faults in the U.S. system, the government must, on the basis of controlling individuals’ private information, set clear steps of the processes involved in dealing with what happens when somebody’s details match those on the lists and what happens when somebody is mistakenly added to those lists. It is also essential that punishments be put in place for any misuse of the information obtained.
The ministry must also outline its long-term vision of how it plans to improve the working conditions of foreign laborers in Japan and unskilled foreign workers in the country. Japan has been widely criticized for the abuse and poor payment that foreign trainees coming to this country have received here and it is a fact that many of the foreign laborers here without visas are widely appreciated. When tightening immigration controls, the government must also make sure that this does not lead to unfair discrimination and also protects the rights of foreign laborers coming to work here.
If the government attaches too much importance to dealing with criminals at the expense of foreigners coming to Japan or gaining international trust, the new system will not receive widespread support.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071124p2a00m0na028000c.html
Giving you the finger
A controversy over fingerprinting foreigners
IN 1641 Japan’s shogunate designated an artificial island in Nagasaki harbour as the only place foreigners could live. Japan has of late been more welcoming to gaijin. Yet this week it began to photograph and take digital fingerprints of all foreigners entering the country?residents as well as tourists and visiting businessmen. Privacy advocates deplore the emergence of a surveillance state. Pundits say it panders to anti-foreign sentiment in Japan, and undermines the country’s ambitions to increase tourism and make Tokyo a global financial centre. Angry expats expect long waits at immigration.
In defence, the government says the measures are simply to keep terrorists out. As an example, Japan’s justice minister, Kunio Hatoyama, a butterfly enthusiast, explained that a friend of a lepidopterist friend was an al-Qaeda operative, who for years travelled in and out of Japan on fake passports; the new measures would block the chap. Mr Hatoyama was quickly forced to backtrack lest it appear that ministers run around netting butterflies with terrorists. Yet the truth remains: terrorism in Japan has only ever been home-grown, most recently in 1995, when a sarin gas attack by a religious cult killed 12 in Tokyo’s subway.
The system mirrors America’s equally controversial US-VISIT programme. In principle, it should not cause such a fuss. All countries are moving towards the collection of biometric information: from next year, Britain will collect such data from visa-holders. The problem comes with implementation. America’s US-VISIT system is fraught with flaws and cost overruns. Technical problems have delayed Europe’s introduction of digital passports. For all Japan’s prowess in designing computers, the government is peculiarly inept at running them. This year, it admitted it had lost 50m electronic-pensions records.
Exempt from the new screening are diplomats, children under 16 and certain permanent residents (ethnic Korean and Taiwanese who have lived in the country for generations). Why only gaijin? Japan already has all sorts of ways to keep watch on its own people, such as ?neighbourhood associations?. Foreigners are outside these social controls. Yet fingerprinting foreigners is just a first step to securing the biometric details of everyone entering and leaving: as it is, frequent travellers, Japanese as well as foreign residents, may save time by pre-registering to use an unmanned automatic gate at airports that takes photographs and fingerprints.
Mr Hatoyama says people should not be delayed more than the 20 minutes it already takes immigration officers to process visitors. This week some of the machines played up, but most travellers fell into line. Officials even claimed to have caught a handful of people who had already been deported at least once. They did not reveal whether they were butterfly collectors.
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10184633
Rally targets Justice Ministry
Dozens of protesters, both foreign and Japanese, gathered outside the Justice Ministry on Tuesday to voice opposition to the new policy of fingerprinting and photographing visitors entering Japan.
The biometric screening system was launched Tuesday over the strong objection of foreign residents as well as human rights organizations, including Amnesty International Japan [and NUGW Tokyo Nambu].