**Interac** \- Seems to be in bad health these days. Has been rocked by recent scandals such as the “don’t get sick video” scandal and had to fire 200 ALTs in Kanto after losing a major contract. Pay has also gone down compared to several years ago. Used to be the “second best” after JET but no longer
**Joytalk** \- Has always been towards the bottom and still seems to be that way. Hasn’t increased nor slashed pay so the health of this company hasn’t changed.
**Heart** \- Considered to be the worst. A few years ago they changed from a monthly salary to a “daily” pay rate, slashing pay even lower. They recently had to fire several of their Japanese staff/coordinators to downsize. They seem REALLY desperate for teachers and their reputation is known everywhere in Japan as bad. I wouldn’t be surprised if they finally go bankrupt in the coming years. There’s no way, with their blatant desperation, they can last much longer
**Borderlink** \- Weirdly enough, this company seems to be improving. They actually have raised their pay compared to 5 years ago (I remember it being 180,000 yen a month lol) and seem to be getting bigger/more contracts. Obviously they are still terrible but the wages for BL employees has gone up. I think they pay more than Interac now.
**ALTIA** \- Hasn’t really slashed pay nor increased pay. Seems to be only in rural center Japan so unable to really expand.
**NOVA** \- Didn’t they go bankrupt 20 years ago? They mostly do Eikawa but do have a hand in the ALT business. They are like Heart in that they only pay daily. Not in good health considering past history.
**JET** \- Pay has gone slightly down but still the best. (Yes, I’m aware they don’t count as “dispatch” because they are a government program.
27 comments
“They actually have raised their pay compared to 5 years ago (I remember it being 180,000 yen a month lol)”
Really? I’d moved on to private schools and it made me happy to look at listings and see how little they were paying, because it made how tired I was worth it. I know some deep countryside positions might have paid that 180, but I definitely saw some 250 or 210. ESID. It depends on how much money the BoE has and how much they like to pinch their yen.
At the end of the day, they’re all dog shit (JET excluded)
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I hear borderlink doesn’t pay back transportation. So you really get paid less than advertised. Interac pays it back however.
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Borderlink paid more than 180,000 5 years ago. I was with them 5 years ago and was paid 230,000. I do know their pay is regional and can depend on the ALTs country of origin. They were/are very black.
Borderlink paid more than 180,000 5 years ago. I was with them 5 years ago and was paid 230,000. I do know their pay is regional and can depend on the ALTs country of origin. They were/are very black.
Interac is split into five regional companies and they are definitely NOT the same across Japan. Borderlink lost 3 contracts in my area to Interac because Interac’s particular regional company doesn’t suck here. They also gave out significant raises the year after last when they had money coming in, it was awesome. This year was tough though because people haven’t been able to come in from overseas. My friends in Borderlink are having a hard time not having cars and no transportation reimbursement. I heard ALTIA is pretty good, but they don’t have a lot of positions. Nova fucking blows, it’s definitely ブラック. All my friends flipped to dispatch as soon as they could. Can’t speak for the others though.
No matter what the line of work they deal with, dispatch companies are all out to cheat you. It’s really sad when a “decent” dispatch company is ranked by how much less it cheats its employees compared to a bad one. In other words, it still cheats you, just less than the other ones.
I work for a dispatch company that provides teachers to private schools. These are not ALT positions. The pay is definitely good compared to ALT dispatch, but there are also definitely more responsibilities that come along with it. One of my coworkers recently asked to be put on shakai hoken. The company said she doesn’t “qualify” because her official work hours are less than thirty hours per week. She pointed out that all the prep, planning, and marking she has to do outside of her official work hours means she actually works over thirty hours a week. The company considers the unpaid work to be “part of the job”.
Instead, the company proposed a compromise. They would increase her hours by a few more per week by assigning her extra duties (not just in name only), so she would “qualify” for shakai hoken. Despite all the unpaid work she already does in her free time, she considered their offer thinking she would at least get a slight pay raise to help offset her contribution to the shakai hoken premiums.
Here’s the kicker; when she asked how much more she would be paid for the extra hours of work they would assign her, the company told her she wouldn’t be paid for them because she is “already well paid.”
Whether my co-worker agrees to accept their sketchy deal or not, I think just the fact that the company made such a proposal would be in violation of some part of the labour code warranting a complaint to the labour bureau. My co-worker, on the other hand, seems to think that because she’s been given the choice to accept or decline their lopsided deal with no threat to her current working conditions or pay, that it’s not an actionable violation of the labour code.
I heard from an inside source that the Tokyo contracts Interac lost all went to Borderlink. Not sure what that means so take it however you will.
Great thread. This is the kind of thing we need.
Hopefully Heart dies out soon. Interac losing contracts and other dispatch companies cutting pay is their fault for agreeing to pay the ALTs so little.
>NOVA – Didn’t they go bankrupt 20 years ago?
In 2007, I believe. And they have been bought and sold a number of times. They are shady AF.
This will piss some people off but to me the general trend is…
– A lot are now accepting E2 speakers from places like the Philippines. Some obviously lobby for this as being a good thing but language / qualifications aside (different argument), that’s who will accept the pay! People from a country where the average salary is about USD $3000 a year! Again I know this will piss people off but I’m not saying they’re shit quality (many will have masters degrees and I looove listening to Sachi Gomez on YouTube… the accents can be beautiful + perfect model language in both English and Japanese… particularly when compared with some bong head, white, surfer dude who probably flunked English). My issue is the exploitation of people who are more vulnerable in order to maximise profits.
– Salaries have come down significantly… not just in substance but also when factoring in inflation (which I respect is minimal in Japan, but there has still been inflation that has not been factored into ALT/eikaiwa salaries).
– Teaching methods have stayed the same for roughly 20 years, with no substantial re-thinking of how stuff gets done. I feel like the product is going backwards and this isn’t something that labour hire companies are thinking about. They’re only worried about getting bums on seats in order to make coin.
Just remember with any dispatch company, YOU are the product that they are pitching to the BOE. The company wants to minimize expenses (how much they pay for you to be there) and maimize returns.
It’s just one big race to the bottom.
There are no “good” dispatch companies. Just some are less shit than others. Having said that though, NOVA is still by far the worst.
There are some decent ALTIA positions in major cities/suburbs just outside of major cities of Shizuoka, Aichi, Gifu, Mie, Osaka, Okayama, and Hiroshima (I might have left one or two prefectures out, but they operate in that general area). However, they are highly contested for and fewer in number than Interac and Borderlink probably.
It’s true, BORDERLINK does pay better than Interac now but summer salary is still nonexistent— Interac employees get summer salaries
I worked for borderlink before and their base pay was 250,000, but the fact that they don’t pay transportation felt disrespectful lol. But, I lived very close to the schools so and I loved the area and schools so I could swallow it. The management I had were very kind and supportive with any problems I had though, which I appreciated a lot.
They lost the contract and I didn’t want to move out of town, so I had applied for Interac last year and they were a MESS, the interview and email correspondence was suuuuuper unprofessional, offered low salary that was not as advertised, cold cut stopped responding when I said they’d have to give me more, and then after I found a MUCH better job they were blowing up my phone and email asking me to work for them for the enticing offer of,,,,the same salary they had lowballed me with before but presented as a big step up. Talking to the Japanese English Teachers I had made friends with the year before, they did a terrible job managing ALT and in the way they contacted schools. I was surprised because I had heard that they were only second to JET.
Absolutely nothing happened in the ALT provider market. You people know absolutely nothing but rumors. There’s a cyclical nature in any market and it comes and goes.
Things you missed:
Heart was banned from employing Filipinos by the Philippine government.
Look let’s be honest – 99% of english teaching in Japan is absolute garbage with garbage salaries. Which is a shame because a lot of really smart and nice people do it, there just isn’t much in the way for them that is better out there. I returned home and within a month was earning triple what I earned in Japan a year and I was getting paid on the higher end of the scale as an ELT
Don’t forget 6 years ago, there was a disaster in Sapporo with Interac when many Interac employees got laid off at the last second. (about 65)
[https://www.generalunion.org/Joomla/index.php/alts-dispatch/1431-sapporo-dispatch-disaster-nova-interac-sapporo-city-board-of-education-all-to-blame#.VydV0h0cvtI.facebook](https://www.generalunion.org/Joomla/index.php/alts-dispatch/1431-sapporo-dispatch-disaster-nova-interac-sapporo-city-board-of-education-all-to-blame#.VydV0h0cvtI.facebook)
Wasn’t as egregious as the Tokyo one this year (about 200) but still bad
If you work for Interac, please have an exist strategy.
People are shitting on these companies when the real culprit is the BOEs who hire these asshats.
I often wonder why the Japanese government let the JET programme go to shit whereas Hong Kong, who have a similar NET scheme, seems to be pretty good. The current dispatch comprises are basically the lowest of the low in terms in of how they treat their employees. And yet people still seem to come. It’s also true that many more Philipinos are coming because they will accept the low pay which drives down pay and conditions for everyone else. I’m so glad I got out of the ALT game back in early 2000s. It wasn’t so bad back then – min salary of 250,000 a month although it was prorated for August and December if I remember correctly.
I know GABA isn’t a dispatch company, but are they still operating well? Had an interview with them about two years ago but declined for a better offer in a different country. Has anyone reviewed them before in this sub? How do they and others that don’t count as dispatch rank as far as language schools in Japan?
GABA = GAYBAR