Foreign language teachers who suddenly lost their jobs when Japan’s largest language school operator closed have been forced to rely on food handouts from their former students in exchange for private lessons, teachers and union officials said Thursday. Impromptu lessons are being offered in parks and restaurants because teachers can’t afford classrooms, or even apartments, they said.
“We know teachers who don’t know where their next meal is coming from,” the president of the Nova Union of Staff and Teachers, Robert Tench, said at a press conference Thursday. “They are in desperate need.”
Some 4,500 foreign language teachers from all around the world lost their jobs with Japan’s largest language school operator, Nova Corp, on October 19.
In response to the sudden end to their livelihoods, the Nova Union of Staff and Teachers launched a “lessons for food” programme for the teachers who are on the verge of becoming homeless.
Natasha Steele, from Sydney, Australia, was fed by her student and came home with a bag full of pastries, enough to feed her for two weeks.
The 26-year-old teacher, who was recruited in Australia and arrived in Japan only 10 months ago, was recently evicted from company accommodation along with her two roommates.
One teacher from Canada lost her job and apartment nine days into her new life in Japan, while a Scottish teacher had to have her parents pay for a flight back home after only a month into her job.
The union also plans to launch a Nova relief fund where people can donate money to help the teachers thrown out of jobs and to request assistance from various embassies, including those of Australia, Britain, Canada, the United States and France.
Australia’s Qantas and British Airways have offered Nova teachers discounted return flights home. Many teachers have not been paid for two months and they cannot afford airline tickets, Tench said.
Last Friday their employer filed for bankruptcy. The scandal-tainted company was granted court protection under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law.
All schools in its network abruptly suspended operations a week ago, dumping thousands of teachers into Japan’s foreign language market.
Nova accumulated debts of about 43.9 billion yen (381.89 million dollars) when students cancelled lessons after the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry ordered the company to suspend some of its classes in June.
The ministry’s order came after it determined that the company had falsely advertised its services.
The scandal caused a rapid plunge in student enrollment. At its peak in 2005, Nova had 480,000 students learning English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Chinese at branches nationwide.
Some 420,000 students, as well as instructors, were only informed about the temporary suspension of the schools through the media or notices posted in classrooms.
The company had already been in labour disputes with its employees for several years.
As the industry leader, Nova had a profound influence in the industry, driving down prices for lessons, standards of services and employment conditions, according to said Louis Carlet of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, which represents Nova union.
Nova has said it aims to find a supporter for its rehabilitation within a month, but four Japanese firms have already showed reluctance to join with the troubled company, according to the Kyodo News Agency.
Meanwhile, Nova’s embattled president, Nozomu Sahashi, 56, has gone into hiding.
“Not paying wages is a crime under the Labour Law,” said Tench, who had been a teacher at Nova for 13 years.
Former Nova president admits to nonpayments of salaries
Former Nova Corp. President Nozomu Sahashi admitted the language school chain withheld wages from thousands of employees, saying the now-defunct company could not raise sufficient funds, Osaka Labor Bureau sources said Friday.
The bureau interviewed Sahashi on suspicion of violating the Labor Standards Law and may seek criminal charges after questioning Nova’s current management team.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200711020304.html
Nova collapse leaves schools without ALTs
As English conversation school chain operator Nova Corp. filed for court protection from creditors under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law last week, schools that have contracts with Nova to dispatch assistant language teachers are scrambling to find substitute teachers or resorting to the use of CDs recorded by native speakers.
“The children were very much looking forward to learning real English as it’s actually used through songs and games from them,” said Shin Naito, headmaster of Yoga Primary School in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward.
English classes with ALTs, who are native English speakers, are increasingly popular among schools, which are eyeing the introduction of compulsory English education at primary schools in the future. About 11,000 ALTs were dispatched through education boards to schools nationwide in the 2006 academic year.
The Setagaya Ward Board of Education contracted with Osaka-based Nova to dispatch ALTs to 64 public primary schools in the ward from the 2006 academic year. According to the contract, six teachers from Nova make the rounds of the schools to teach English. The board set aside a budget of 20 million yen for fiscal 2007.
As Nova’s nonpayment of wages came to the fore, the board decided to terminate its contract with Nova on Oct. 23 and started talking with Nova about conditions for the termination. The announcement of Nova’s filing for protection under the law was made while the two sides were still in negotiations. A Nova employee who was in charge of the talks with the board later telephoned the board and said the matter was no longer up to him and that the board should contact the court-appointed administrator.
Currently the board is approaching another firm to dispatch teachers. However, the timing–the middle of an academic year–is not convenient for such an arrangement. The board has no prospect to resume English classes at its schools with native speakers.
“We are consulting with our lawyer about how to deal with Nova,” said an official of the board.
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Unpaid salaries case probed
The Osaka Chuo Labor Standards Inspection Office questioned former Nova Corp. President Nozomu Sahashi on Monday on suspicion of having violated the Labor Standards Law by failing to pay salaries to Nova employees, including foreign teachers, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Thursday.
According to sources, Sahashi said he did his best to manage the firm’s cash flow, but failed as a result of a potential sponsor suddenly deciding against making a contribution.
Whether the firm had sufficient funds to pay salaries is expected to be the focal point of the bureau’s efforts to build a case against the school chain, Sahashi, or both.
The bureau plans to investigate the firm’s financial status from the time salary payments were delayed, with support from Nova administrators.
The bureau asked Sahashi several times in October to explain the circumstances behind the salary payment delays, and received a response Monday.
Bring NOVA back from the brink — or the bunny gets it
Failed NOVA Corp.’s thousands of unpaid teachers, hundreds of thousands of paying students left without classes and billions of yen in debt have been well-documented, but Shukan Asahi (11/9) notes an important question about the English conversation chain remains unanswered: What’s going to happen to the NOVA bunny?
NOVA grew to become Japan’s biggest English conversation chain, but its rapid growth became too hot to for it to handle, and the company is now in the hands of receivers after filing for protection from creditors.
Receivers have said they’ll give NOVA a month to find a savior and if it doesn’t happen, the company will go bankrupt.
While in its heyday, the NOVA bunny was one of the country’s most recognizable symbols, but what’s going to happen to it now?
“If NOVA can find a company to prop it up so that it can continue offering classes and doing business, the company’s trademark rights and intellectual property rights like the bunny will stay as they are,” a expert on commercial law tells Shukan Asahi. “But if NOVA goes bust and the company is broken up, all its assets have to be monetized and the proceeds forwarded to creditors. Rights to the bunny could well be sold off. That is, of course, if there’s anybody out there who wants to buy them.”
The NOVA bunny first appeared in a TV commercial the conversation class chain started airing in the autumn of 2002. It made an enormous impact among the cute-loving Japanese and was soon among the most highly rated commercials in the country.
Merchandising followed, first with the release of a CD that reached No. 12 on the Oricon chart — Japan’s equivalent of Billboard — then came soft toys, mobile phone straps, T-shirts; the whole kit and caboodle.
Within months, the NOVA bunny was one of Japan’s hottest properties. Like the company that spawned it, though, fate hasn’t been too kind to the NOVA bunny.
“When the bunny merchandise first came out, it was only sold to students of the chain, so it was regarded of something of a rare commodity and also served to boost student numbers. I wanted to buy a bunny doll myself, so checked out the prices on an online auction site and saw that they were selling for several thousand yen apiece,” Dokkyo University professor and economic analyst Takuro Morinaga tells Shukan Asahi. “The bunny was as cute as hell, but soon it was being sold everywhere and eventually turned up in game centers all across the country, losing that ‘rarity value’ that had made it so popular in the first place. I think, like NOVA itself, it wasn’t good for the bunny’s fortunes that it became too popular too quickly. It’s really unfortunate, but I think in terms of the value of intellectual property and commercial rights, it’s a bit much to expect anything from the NOVA bunny now.”
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/culture/waiwai/news/20071102p2g00m0dm012000c.html
Nova teachers offer classes for food
A union representing teachers of Nova Corp. said Thursday its ranks will soon launch a “Lesson-for-Food” campaign in which they will offer free classes to students of the failed foreign-language school chain in exchange for basic food or meals.
The union said in Tokyo that it has also started accepting donations to help Nova teachers who find themselves destitute and face being evicted from their homes, said Bob Tench, president of the Nova branch of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu.
“Why are we doing this? People have no money . . . they have no food,” Tench told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. “This is a crisis that is rapidly turning into a tragedy.”
According to the union and government sources, large numbers of Nova teachers, mainly foreign, have not been paid for months as the school’s finances tanked.
Louis Carlet, deputy general secretary of the union, said it is hard to gauge exactly how many people are in dire straits because all schools were closed Oct. 26, when Nova filed for court protection under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law.
Two court-appointed administrators for Nova are now searching for a sponsor to help rebuild the firm.
But finding a sponsor will not help solve the immediate problems of Nova teachers because it will take time for the company to reopen for business and start settling unpaid salaries, Tench said.
Ex-NOVA president Sahashi denies fleecing company over videophone sales
NOVA Corp. founder Nozomu Sahashi denies having illegally profited from the sale of overpriced videophone equipment to the firm, according to his lawyer.
Receivers for NOVA are considering filing a criminal complaint with law enforcers accusing Sahashi, 56, the sacked president of the company, of aggravated breach of trust for unfairly profiting from the sale and causing losses to the firm.
Sahashi dismissed allegations that a company wholly owned by Sahashi’s family sold videophones for the company’s “Ochanoma Ryugaku” home lessons for several times the original price they were bought for from their manufacturer.
“The company bought the machines for more than 50,000 yen from their manufacturer and sold them to NOVA for less than 70,000 yen,” the lawyer quoted Sahashi as saying. “The profits from the deal went to cover the costs of developing the machine.”
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071102p2a00m0na024000c.html
Nova share trading shady near the end
Boss unloaded amid volume, price flux
Irregular transactions took place in the trading of shares in Nova Corp. in late August and early September ? well before the ailing foreign language school chain was put under court protection for rehabilitation last week, market sources said Thursday.
The large volume of transactions and wild price fluctuations observed during that period came in the absence of factors encouraging investors to sell or buy Nova shares, the sources said, some alleging unfair trading took place.
Nova’s share price on the Jasdaq Securities Exchange in Tokyo plunged to ¥29 from above ¥40 on Aug. 29, after falling gradually amid rumors of its deteriorating financial condition. The price later fluctuated wildly, peaking above ¥60.
On Aug. 29, the daily trading volume in Nova stock suddenly rose to 10 million shares after ranging from 100,000 shares to 1.7 million shares. On Sept. 7, the trading volume swelled to 60 million shares.
A market analyst who requested anonymity said that given the large volume of transactions, parties other than individual investors were apparently behind the wild price fluctuations.
The transactions may have been the result of insider trading by those with access to secret information related to Nova, said Shoichi Arisawa of Iwai Securities Co.
Nova said earlier this week that Nozomu Sahashi, who was dismissed as president of the firm on Oct. 25, sold a massive number of Nova shares in September and failed to fulfill a legal requirement for investors to report any major changes in shareholdings to authorities.
On the Jasdaq exchange Thursday, Nova ended ¥3 lower at ¥19 after hitting a record low of ¥11 Tuesday. The bourse will delist Nova on Nov. 27.
Nova has suspended operations since coming under court protection Friday.
The suspension has also affected schools to which Nova sent assistant language teachers. The Osaka city board of education said Thursday it has canceled a contract with Nova for assistant teachers for 335 elementary and junior high schools.
Union reveals plan for feeding unpaid starving NOVA teachers: ‘Lesson for food’
Union representatives of the scandal-plagued NOVA Corp.’ foreign employees met the foreign press in Tokyo on Thursday, to unveil their relief plans for their fellow instructors who struggle to survive while their wages remain unpaid.
The announcement at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo’s Chiyoda-ku came a week after NOVA, Japan’s largest English conversation school chain and the nation’s largest employer of foreigners, applied for court protection from its creditors under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law.
Dubbed “Lesson for Food,” NOVA’s foreign instructors will give English lessons to students or former students in their homes, public areas or parks. It is yet to be decided specifically when and where they will give such “delivery” lessons, according to the union representatives.
They have also decided to establish a fund for accepting donations from around the world via the Internet and other media, representatives of the NOVA teachers’ branch of the National Union of General Workers (NUGW) Tokyo Nambu said during the press conference.
Furthermore, they will petition the embassies here of the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries to provide relief for their citizens at the government level.
When asked by foreign reporters why they wanted to stay in Japan, the representatives said, “We can’t even afford an airline ticket to return home. We love Japan, and we don’t want to leave with a bad memory.”
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071102p2a00m0na016000c.html
Ex-Nova president may face charges
Lawyer and bankruptcy administrator Toshiaki Higa-shibata said the [Nova Group] company, Ginganet Co., unfairly obtained billions of yen in profits through the intra-group ruse.
Higashibata is now considering filing a criminal complaint against [ousted Nova Corp. President] Sahashi on suspicion of a special breach of trust.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200711010091.html
Nova chief’s profit company’s loss / Fired president suspected of breach of trust over equipment deal
A luxury president’s suite in a commercial building in Osaka used by Nozomu Sahashi, former president of Nova Corp., which has filed for court protection against bankruptcy, was shown to the press on Tuesday night.
Lawyer Toshiaki Higashibata, a preservation administrator of the firm, said, “This suite is a symbol of how the former president used the firm for his own purposes.”
The suite, located on the top floor of the 20-floor building in Naniwa Ward, Osaka, was renovated at a cost of 60 million yen to 70 million yen. The monthly rent of 2.7 million yen was covered by Nova.
Besides a desk and other office effects, the 330-square-meter space contains a bar stocked with premium wine and spirits and an eight-tatami mat tearoom. Opposite the tearoom is a wall that opens to access a secret chamber with a bed, sauna and bathroom with a jacuzzi. There is a similar president’s suite in the firm’s Tokyo headquarters, sources said.
An employee of the firm who entered the president’s suite for the first time said: “Employees were restricted [from entering the suite]. Only top executives could go in.” He said he did not expect the president’s suite would be so lavish, although he had heard a rumor about the secret room.
According to Higashibata, Sahashi’s income was about 300 million yen in fiscal 2005, when Nova recorded a deficit of 3.1 billion yen. In fiscal 2006, Sahashi’s income was 159 million yen, whereas Nova was 2.9 billion yen in the red.
Sahashi had been out of contact, but on Tuesday, his lawyer contacted the administrators. “[The lawyer] expressed an intention to object to [Nova’s] resolution to dismiss [Sahashi as president] and the court order to protect the firm’s assets. But an owner-proprietor should be the first to give up assets when the company is in trouble,” Higashibata said. “I, along with Nova employees, resent him.”
A 26-year-old former Nova instructor from Canada handed in her resignation on Oct. 19 without receiving her salary. She said she wished the president had carried out his responsibilities in a way that measured up to the splendor of his suite, and that by canceling the rent contract for the suite, he could have paid the salaries of 15 foreign instructors.
A 63-year-old woman of Sakai who had been going to Nova’s Sakai branch for seven years, paid 380,000 yen in advance for future lessons.
“I thought [Sahashi] might have lived in the lap of luxury, but this is much more than I’d imagined,” she said. “That might have been OK if the company was profitable, but he shouldn’t have done that when his firm was in financial trouble. He should come out in front of the students and apologize.”