I am asking out of curiosity and preparing for the future. Second year in the business and my company, we are asked to sign contracts yearly, which means they can get rid of us at the end of the year if they no longer want us, right? My questions are:
(1) Is this true with all ALT dispatch companies? Are there other companies doing it right?
(2) In Japanese Labor Law, is this even legal? Or does this only apply to migrant workers? I’ll be able to find the answer online, but it would require a lot of reading, so taking my chances here. Comparative advantage at its best,
(3) Were you or any of the people you know got fired or laid off by their companies?
4 comments
1) yearly contracts is pretty standard for the whole industry. Dispatch, private schools, direct hire BoE.
2) It’s very legal. However, if you’ve been employed for a certain number is years (I think 4?) then I think they’re obligated to offer a permanent contract.
3) not getting renewed is one thing, but getting fired is actually really hard in Japan unless you do something *really* bad. Unless they can pretty clearly document an explicit violation firing someone is just handing yen to the civil courts.
A one year contract ending, and not being offered a second year, is not “getting fired.” It is simple not being renewed. Decent companies let you know 3 months prior to ending date that they will not renew. Sucky ones tell you 2 weeks before ending date.
Prefecture organizations are even dickier about it. If you have a contract funded by prefectural governments, you get the contract the day before the new year starts in April. This is true for everyone, not just foreigners.
Yes. It is legal to fire someone after they complete their 1 year contract. It not considered to be a firing under the law; it’s simply not renewing.
Companies use these types of contracts to keep their workforce liquid and to avoid giving raises or the other perks that are generally given to those who are hired under the permanent employment system.
This is generally how the employment system works in Japan – people who go through the Japanese university system compete for jobs at large companies where they are most likely to be given permanent employment status which makes it very hard for them to get fired; the rest of the population are on temporary one-year renewable contracts that may or may not be extended after that year.
However, a law took effect in 2018 wherein a company is obligated to give full-time status (though not lifetime employment) to anyone who is on a yearly renewable contract after they have completed five years and move onto a sixth contract. This has become known as the “five-year law.”
What began happening, though, is that companies are firing people as soon as they reach the five-year limit that would make them eligible for full-time status. In other words, you won’t get to a sixth contract and will therefore always be job-searching.
This isn’t only done to immigrant workers; it’s applicable to everyone in Japan. It’s most common in the service-sector and other blue-collar jobs; but it’s also starting to leak into other industries as well – Japan’s employment system is fast becoming a temping system.
However, the ESL industry is one industry where this treatment has always been normalized. In other words, it’s on par with the service sector and this will probably never change.
That is why you should understand before coming to Japan that ALT work and eikaiwa work are not careers. There is no space whatsoever to move upwards in terms of either skills or salary – it’s like being a McDonald’s employee where your only option for upward mobility is to become the store manager.
Your skills will be limited to this very narrow area and won’t be applicable to any other industry, so if you quit, you have nowhere to go but another eikaiwa or ALT company – and there you’ll start off at the bottom again. There is no sideways or upward movement across the industry.
Your only way to move upwards and stay in ESL is get a MA in TESOL and/or a Japanese teaching license, and teach in the school system as a homeroom teacher or a university teacher. But those jobs are very competitive, and salaries in those sectors are also falling, and are additionally being slowly taken over by the limited-term 5-year contract system. Tenure at universities is becoming more and more rare.
All in all, this is not an industry to join at the moment. You are about fifteen or twenty years too late to hop the ESL gravy train. It’s all dregs now.
If you just want to live here for five or so years, you’re probably going to work continuously and have a good time, but you won’t have any skills to show for that time that would help you get a job back home.
This is why we tell people it’s not a career, and that they are better off staying at max one or two years.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.