看過できぬ、芝浦工業大学の組合つぶし

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全国一般東京ゼネラルユニオン（東ゼン労組）は今週木曜、東京都労働委員会に、芝浦工業大学（SIT）による不当労働行為の救済申立てを行った。

東ゼン労組は、SITが組合加盟者全員の解雇（雇い止めを含めて）を来年度に予定している点について、法に反する組合つぶしに相当すると主張している。組合に加盟しているSIT講師は、来年度にとどまらない期間の定めのない雇用を求めて、今年6月から散発的にストライキを実施してきた。

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Would-be NTV announcer’s fate hangs on issues of morality and fraud

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BY HIFUMI OKUNUKI
NOV 26, 2014

The prevalence of the employment custom of saiyō naitei (tentative job offers) may well be peculiar to Japan. As I touched upon in my March 27, 2012, column, university juniors and seniors skip class to attend work seminars, company orientations, internships and, finally, a series of tests and interviews with prospective employers.

Universities wholeheartedly approve of this shūkatsu job-hunting mania and are therefore quite lenient about attendance, assignments and other mere scholastic responsibilities. If things go well, seniors find themselves the lucky recipients of a saiyō naitei — an early promise of employment to begin the first April after graduation.

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Shane Eikaiwa Issues

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Shane Eikaiwa Issues
シェーン英会話の問題

  • Are you unsatisfied with the relationship between teachers and Japanese school staff?
  • Are school counsellors truthful to you about student feedback or do they obstruct you by making inept “improvement suggestions”?
  • Does your school counsellor assign you very heavy schedules with only short breaks?
  • Are you pressured to cover days at the last minute?
  • The schedule for the next day can be changed only as late as 6 p.m the day before. Does your counsellor call you late into the night?
  • Are you treated with respect from your manager?
  • Do you have a problem with cover days?
  • Do you have a problem with additional training days?
  • Are you concerned that teacher representative only meets management twice a year and that meeting minutes are rarely seen by teachers?
  • Do you want to be enrolled in Shakai Hoken?
  • Are your troubled by the increase in insurance premiums to Interglobal from 7,000 yen to 8,000 yen a month which doesn’t cover dental insurance or hospitalisation?
  • Are you upset that teachers are only considered to be working teaching time, not the actual time in school?

Improve your working conditions at Shane by contacting us today: info@tokyogeneralunion.org

Shane Teachers Begin Tozen Strike Action

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Several teachers at Shane laid down their white board markers on Tuesday to demand the reinstatement of an unfairly dismissed union member and to demand job security.

The English language school illegally fired a teacher for leaving the school during a break. In Japan employees are 100% free during breaks.

Shane also forces teachers through the humiliation and insecurity of one-year revolving contracts. Tozen Union Shane Workers Union is fighting for several demands, among them ordinary permanent employment.

We are experiencing union growth at Shane and look forward to having enough members to make striking even more effective. We also reach out to Shane administrative staff to join forces.

‘Maternity harassment’ verdict benefits women, men — and our humanity

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Last Thursday’s Supreme Court verdict in the “maternity harassment” case brought by a physical therapist in Hiroshima was the first of its kind, overturning decades of business-friendly jurisprudence along with rulings from the district and high courts.

As I mentioned in last year’s September Labor Pains (“Mata-hara: turning the clock back on women’s rights”), the word mata-hara is short for maternity harassment, just as seku-hara and pawa-hara refer to sexual harassment and power harassment, respectively. Maternity harassment means workplace discrimination against pregnant or childbearing women, including dismissal, contract nonrenewal and wage cuts.

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Job insecurity among Japan’s university teachers is a recipe for further decline

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Buyer's market
Buyer’s market: With the population shrinking, colleges in Japan are desperate to seize a share of the dwindling ‘customer base.’ | ANN AKINO

Universities in Japan are caught up in a cutthroat struggle for survival. As the population of children plummets, so, in turn, does the number of college entrants.

The decline is particularly stark considering that the number of universities had swelled on the back of the postwar baby boom and bubble economy. Institutions of higher learning are frantic to seize a share of the dwindling “customer base.” Universities choosing students is a thing of the past: Now students select universities.

Born in the early 1970s, I’m what’s known in Japan as a second-wave baby boomer. As a college student in the early 1990s, I experienced the emotional stress and hardship of entrance-exam hell. Many uni hopefuls failed their exams and became so-called wandering ronin for a year until the next round of tests. The term was derived from samurai in the Meiji Era and earlier who left their feudal domain and thus belonged nowhere. During this “nowhere time,” these modern-day academic ronin often studied from early morning until late at night, leading to nervous breakdowns and even cases of children murdering their overbearing parents.

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Shibaura Institute of Technology Workers on Strike

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Today, the Shibaura Institute of Technology Workers Union both struck and leafleted the university. Five members of the union struck all three of their Monday lessons, from 1:00pm to 5:50pm.

This was the first day of the new semester and thus it was necessary to explain the strike to students whom the university has not made aware of its ongoing labor dispute with non-Japanese English teachers it wishes to fire and replace with Japanese-speaking English teachers.

To this end, a total of seven striking teachers and other supporters from parent-union Zenkoku Ipppan Tokyo General Union, or Tozen, leafleted the Omiya campus’s Higashi-Omiya Station bus stop from 12:20pm to 12:50pm. Reaction was positive from students and teachers alike, with many of those leafleted expressing sympathy with the unfair treatment the strikers are receiving.

The union plans to continue industrial action until the university stops stonewalling and agrees to some kind of compromise.