Cherry blossoms are open and across Kanto, people are flocking to parks to view this spring’s offerings. Nambu will hold our hanami party this coming Saturday at 10:20 am.

This is a great time to meet your fellow union members and have a nice time as well. There will be some drink and food but also feel free to bring your own.

What: Nambu Hanami Blossom Viewing Party

When: Saturday, April 1st at 10:20 am

Where: Ferry Landing (Suijoh-basu Noriba) at the southwest corner of Sumida Park, a few blocks east of Asakusa Station on the Asakusa or Ginza Lines. Check out the map at:

http://map.yahoo.co.jp/pl?nl=35.42.27.949&el=139.48.6.662&la=1&fi=1&skey=%c0%f5%c1%f0&sc=2

English teaching in Japan is not what it used to be. Conditions are changing; the work is harder to come by, wages are falling, and staff are increasingly taking their employers to court.

“It’s (the ALT industry) getting bigger and bigger, but as it gets bigger there is a race to the bottom in wages,” says [NUGW Tokyo Nambu deputy general secretary Louis] Carlet.

“In the bidding process the schools are desperate to decrease their bid and so of course they squeeze wages and take away all benefits and increase work hours.”

So the teachers, and eventually the students, are the ones that suffer. “More teachers take it because there is nothing else available. The reality is they are terrible jobs, with no job security.”

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20060328zg.html

Yesterday, March 22nd, three unions: NUGW Tokyo Nambu, Kanagawa City Union, and Zentoitsu Workers Union joined forces in an action-packed day of five demonstrations. The day’s actions were in response to unresolved disputes ranging from dismissals, including two dismissals for pregnancy, to union busting and threats of dismissal, to unpaid wages and passport confiscation.

The day finished up with two heated collective bargaining sessions, one in the afternoon with Korakuen English Centre, and another later that evening with the vehemently anti-union NIC, apparently still reeling from the combined might of three unions and a sound truck earlier in the day.

“It’s almost taboo to raise the issue of mass immigration here,” [Hidenori Sakanaka, former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau] says.

“Japan has no experience of this, only of sending people abroad. Modern Japan almost totally shuts out foreigners and the only people who debate the issue are specialists. Nobody is even researching it.”

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20060321zg.html

“A lot of people see the advertisements … and think it will be like schoolroom teaching and lots of fun, but when you get here it is more like doing factory line work,” he says. “The whole teaching-English-in-Japan thing is a complete fraud and the experience can be quite bitter.”

But for anyone set on working in Japan, the Nova language school should be the last option, he says.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hard-lessons-from-teaching-english-in-japan/2006/03/14/1142098460885.html?page=fullpage

Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of the influential Japan Business Federation, said Monday Japan should accept foreign laborers “in all business categories” to cope with a shortage of labor in the near future.

As Japan’s labor population will begin to decrease by 1 million a year after 2010, it will be difficult to overcome a resultant labor shortage…

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/366875

Louis Carlet, deputy general secretary of the 2,600-member National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu (to which some Japan Times employees belong), agreed. It is always those women in less stable situations who bear the brunt of negative trends in the economy, he said.

“When companies downsize, or when they shift toward fixed-term contracts, the first target, in my experience, is women,” he said. “That is because there is still a mentality that real workers are men.”

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/fl20060312×1.html

Two colleges, one in Fukuoka Prefecture and the other in Tokyo, have stopped requiring non-Japanese applicants to submit identification certificates, following complaints that it is a discriminatory practice, school officials said Thursday.

Kyushu Dental College in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, made the decision after a South Korean resident of Japan complained to the college that the requirement was discriminatory. After consulting with the education ministry, the college decided to eliminate the requirement next day. Tokyo-based Showa University received a similar complaint last month and eliminated the requirement, it said.

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/366460