Year of the Dog's Weblog

Posts Tagged ‘contracts

Tonight I just got the details about my new contract. Here it is verbatim:

“We would like you to work in Mukanata next school year.
Your schools are Kato JHS, Kato ES and Genkai ES. You can walk to Kato JHS and ES from Akama station. To get to Genkai ES you can take bus from Togo station.
232,000 yen per month is provided except for August. So is transportation expenses up to 15,000 yen per month.
We will show you the actual contract at the meeting on 24th.
If you have some questions, please contact me.”
Con: Here is what is wrong with this contract. First they gave me a school that is really far away. It is so far in fact that there aren’t that many regular buses to catch. If I miss the one bus that I need I will be late and I will be docked half a day’s pay. I’m not late very often, but if circumstances should arise I don’t believe I should be docked half a day’s pay when legal according Japanese labor standards the max they are allowed to dock is a maximum of %10 of a days pay. Just another way they try to stick it to foreigners because most are unfamiliar with the laws here in Japan. Next I asked for a raise of 10,000 yen. It is a fairly standard raise in Japan for completing a contract, but of course they didn’t give it to me. Also we don’t get bonuses. Everyone who works at the public schools in Japan gets a bonus, except us foreigners. Some bonuses in Japan can be as high as 5 months worth of pay and as low as 2 months worth of pay. Not too shabby for Japanese employees. You also notice in the e-mail I was sent that we don’t get paid for the month of August. The board of education pays my company OWLS for that month, but it just collects the money and tells us that we don’t get paid then, because there is no work, but this is a lie on their part. This a common practice at this company I work at. Anything to squeeze a dime out of us.  There is no chance for promotion in my company and no chance for any significant kind of raise. Something else I just found out this morning. As you’ll notice in the letter there is a 15,000 cap or travel expenses. Well we have to fill out a travel expense form every month. The board of education pays OWLS for all our travel expenses. There is no limit. Whatever we fill out on the form OWLS gets paid. Basically OWLS is getting everything over 15,000 yen.  I had a friend who had to pay nearly 40,000 yen to commute to his schools. He was only reimbursed for 15,000 yen and OWLS gets 25,000. Sounds pretty shady to me. We have monthly meetings and if we don’t attend them, we are docked 4,000 yen. However we don’t get paid anything for attending them after our regular working ours. And don’t even get me started on paid and unpaid holidays with this company. Don’t try and take a day off without filling out a form first. Even in cases of family emergencies. A friend who works at the company told me that a friend of his died and he wanted to attend the funeral. The company had the nerve to ask who died and they wanted some kind of proof. It’s not any business of theirs. A personal day is a personal day.
PRO: The kids and the teachers at the schools are very nice and you can have many interesting experiences working in Japanese public schools. You get public holidays and weekends off. You can improve your Japanese by working in a Japanese environment.
It’s not a very enticing deal for me anymore. I originally signed with this company because I was desperate for a job because my former company, NOVA, went bankrupt and I had to make rent on my new place. Now that I’m settled in my place and earned the level 2 of the Japanese language proficiency test, I don’t think I need to stay with this company. And if anyone from my company is reading this, you most definitely understand why. It’s time for me to move onto bigger and better things. I will make something of myself. There are opportunites in Japan for those who are willing to go after them.
Pleae take a look at my online shop at www.cafepress.com/gorillaskin

I have written because well. I ate a pizza and I couldn’t move afterwards. No, not really, but I did it a pizza and it was great. I haven’t been keeping to great a track of what I’ve been eating the past few days, but I know a few things that I ate and drank: A box of Chocolate cover almonds (one of my favorite candies), a thing of sour cream and onion pringles, some more peanut butter and jam sandwiches (I think I’m close to running out of peanut butter), coca-cola, a piece of fried chicken, ramen noodles, and of course the usual bento and onigiri and grapefruit juice. I haven’t exercised at all since I wrote unless you count commuting from work. I bike 5 minutes to the station hop on a train, and then walk 15 or 20 minutes to my school once I get there. Then I do the same thing but in reverse when I come home. It’s really hard though, because I keep running over peoples’ feet when I cycle backwards on my way home. But honestly I don’t even work up a sweat. On the plus side the weather has been warming up recently.

Anyway, tomorrow is my last day at one of my schools where I teach at. I gotta go to the graduation ceremony in the morning and the teachers party in the evening. We’re going to eat french food I think. Which will be a nice treat. I’ve had french food before and it was really good. The weather report says it’s going to rain tomorrow, but I sure hope not because I hate getting my suit all wet.

Well I’ve been giving more goals some more thought after my interview last night. The job offer wasn’t very appetizing. For one they want me to work at more schools. At most 4 schools per month. And they want me to teach more lessons. But they would not any of my important questions or my fellow coworkers questions. They just kept putting it off, “Saying we can’t tell you know because we aren’t sure yet.” It’s a load of Oscar Meyers’ finest. They know exactly which schools they intent on giving us, but they don’t want to tell us yet, so they can keep us on with the company a little while longer so that if we have other opportunities we might pass them to stay with our current company. Well honestly I’m getting tired of their nonsense. I will not continue with the company if they don’t give me the raise I asked for or closer schools to my home. It gets expensive paying to commute so far. I have a friend that nearly pays $400 every month and the company only compensates him for $150.

I have decided what I’ll do if I don’t like their deal. I will teach private lessons to keep a steady income. I’ll receive 2 paychecks from the company one at the end of this month and one at the end of next month. With that I can stay solvent for a few months while I build up my clientel. Plus I’ll work at my other enterprises: writing books, designing t-shirts, selling my artwork on ebay/yahoo auctions and in flea markets if need be. What I want to do is get a translation job, but I don’t have the credentials yet. I need at least Level 1 of Japanese proficiency for most companies to even consider looking at my resume. I will do what it takes. I’m looking into how much capital I need in order to start my company. Keep me in your prayers, and if you don’t pray well wish me luck, and if you don’t believe in luck or prayer well…. you probably have your own problems to worry about.


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