JETs, ALTs, AETs, etc., etc.,
Parents, Students, Taxpayers…ALL WELCOME to kick off our
**NEW DEAL for ALTs campaign!**
**Monday, 27 June at 19:30 via Zoom**
**sign up at:**Â [**gu.generalunion.org/nda**](http://gu.generalunion.org/nda)
**Speakers Include:** Takatsuki City Councillor – Mr. Takagi, Union officials from across Japan, ALT union members
**Presentation Includes:** Japan Board of Education ALT survey results, Campaign goals and objectives, Launch of National ALT Working Conditions Survey.
**Let’s make sure that ALTs have DECENT WORK and are given the tools to provide QUALITY EDUCATION while keeping public education public and free of private dispatching.**
Want more information about the campaign? [bit.ly/newdeal4alt](https://bit.ly/newdeal4alt) (download our campaign leaflet here)
**PLEASE SHARE WITH ALL YOUR ALT FRIENDS ACROSS JAPAN!**
**More information:**
Assistant Language Teachers have been in Japan since the 1970s. What began as a handful of participants on government exchange programs has become a system that employs almost 20,000 teachers  in positions from kindergartens through senior high schools. These teachers serve under a dizzying variety of job titles, contract types, employers, and work conditions all over Japan.Â
* Private companies compete to win the lowest bid driving down salaries and standards. ALTs are left with low pay and often, no insurance.
* Changes in labor law have disadvantaged directly hired ALTs forcing them into unstable yearly contracts that must be re-interviewed for each year.
* JET Programme participants are forced out when their arbitrary contract limits expire, despite the fact that labour law changes forbid contract renewal limits.Â
Lack of oversight and standardization has turned the ALT field into an unorganized race to bottom as salaries remain stagnant and positions increasingly unstable. Seemingly paradoxically, this has been concurrent with rising standards in curriculum leading to increased workload and importance of language teachers.Â
The ALTs deserve decent work and the Japanese teachers and students deserve decent ALTs who deliver quality education.
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4 comments
I hope any protest that is done doesn’t end the same way as the Homestead Strike
[deleted]
You are aware, just so we’re clear, that ALTs are not and have never been teachers?
the precise term used, 外国語指導助手, or Language Instruction *Assistant*, makes no mention to them being teachers, and the use of teacher in the English translation is a *misnomer*.
JET, as one example, stands for Japan Exchange and Teaching, and while teaching is used in this acronym, that’s no excuse for not pointing out that a. teach*ing*, not teach*ers*, and b. exchange is highlighted in the acronym itself and the explicitly stated goal of JET is about internationalisation, *not* securing teachers.
Which it both is not doing and cannot do, seeing as how ALTs are not qualified as teachers.
ALTing is not, has never been, and neither will nor should ever be anything more than a short term stint job for fresh graduates with no direction in life getting a bit of experience to put on a CV. It is not a long term career and should not be mistaken for one.
Apologies for the length, but it’s a bit of a pet peeve, as this misunderstanding is a big part of the problem.
If the ALT industry gets worse, the eikaiwa industry gets worse. If the eikaiwa industry gets worse, the university jobs get worse.
Its not abstract at all, yet some unloved persons who stake their ego on anonymously trash-talking on Reddit are too drunk on hateorade to see the forest for the trees.