How doe ALT schedules work in practice?

10 comments

1. the 29.5 was a scam the companies were using to skip paying for insurance and pension. They would come up with all kinds of ways to get there like only counting class time or only giving 1 day a week. The new law also has an earning requirement of 8 man so they seem to be making everyone stay 40-50 hours for the same pay.

2. When i was an ALT the company only counted actual teaching time as work. Therefore even though I’d be at my schools from before 0830 until after 4 because I was averaging around 5 50 minute lessons per day that technically only qualified as around 20 hours of work on a 29.5 hour contract. I never bothered to ask if I could leave the schools when i wasn’t scheduled to teach, i’m sure they’d have had some excuse lined up as to why I wasn’t allowed.

3. I’ve never heard of this 29.5 hour rule; every ALT in my company (at least that I know of) works 40 hours a week. I need to be in the school a bit before 8, and leave a bit after 4. There’s an unpaid lunch, but that’s it.

4. It’s not a rule, it’s a shady scam that companies such as Interac do in order to get out of paying into their employees pension & health insurance by writing the employees off as part time. Yes you have to be at school full time hours (usually 8:00-4:00 or something like that) and are expected to be working the whole time. But on paper they write off all time that’s not class time (time before/after/between class, time when you’re forced to eat lunch with students, lesson prep time, etc) as “break time.” But of course it’s not real break time, you’re not allowed to leave the school or do whatever you want. It’s expected that you’re still working.

   So even if you had the most full possible schedule of six periods of 50 minute lessons a day for five days a week, that would be under 30 hours since all other time is written off as break time on paper. It’s a loop hole exploited by shady companies.

5. because of the one hour break maybe

6. Depends on who you work for. Jet has a bargained contract that stipulates hours per week, 8:30 to 4:30 with a 1 hour lunch or 8:30 to 4:15 with a 45 minute lunch, and class load maximums. 20 days off (160 hours) a year paid, medical, maternity, paternity, emergency leave policies (deaths in the family, for example).

   Officially, and how it works practically can vary depending on your backbone.

7. It’s rare to work 40 hours. My usual schedule lets me go home around 3:30

8. Yeah I used to work for a company using this tactic.
   At first I didn’t think anything of it, other than having to show up early (10-30 min, your discretion) to prep for classes.
   Hours were 1-9, +1 hour unpaid lunch.
   I mean for all intents and purposes that’s a full-time position right? Y’know, 40 hours a week kinda thing.
   Well, in the contract it says “the independent contractor shall teach thirty-give 50-minute lessons per week…” Guess how much work time that comes out. It’s….29.3 hours! Just under what the law says. Yeah with prep time or realistically like a 42+ hour job.

9. The 29.5 hour rule was a loophole companies were exploiting so they could avoid enrolling employees in shakai hoken (health insurance and pension). However, the law changed from October of 2022. If your employer has 101 or more employees, any employee who works twenty hours a week or more must be enrolled in shakai hoken. A company employing fewer people than this, must enroll employees working thirty or more hours a week rather than twenty. Unfortunately, if your dispatch company employs fewer than 101 people, they can still exploit the 29.5 hour loophole. From October 2024, the law will change again whereas a company having fifty-one or more employees must enroll them in shakai hoken if they work twenty or more hours a week.

10. Since the change over to the new healthcare policy with my company I now have extended hours which sees me leaving at 4.45pm each day now as opposed to the normal time of 3.50pm, while I do use this time to plan as much as I can I seem to be an isolated case as the other ALT in my town gets to leave at 3.35pm mon-thurs and 1.30pm on Friday, I’d definitely love that early finish time on a Friday, each schedule unfortunately even if there are multiple ALTs in the same town.