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A reminder that the Nambu FWC fourth Annual General Meeting is scheduled for this Sunday, April 22, 2007 from 1pm to 5pm at the Tokyo Nambu offices in Shimbashi, Tokyo.
Business will include executive officer elections, constitutional amendments, policy discussions, and reports from branches and individual members.
According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the average full-time employee worked 2,041.2 hours in 2006, compared with 2,028 hours the previous year. Another government survey shows that one out of every four male employees in their 30s worked more than 60 hours a week in 2005. No job category breakdown was provided.
In 2003, a worker in the manufacturing sector in Japan worked on average 1,975 hours, compared with 1,525 hours in Germany and 1,538 hours in France. Closer to Japan, but still lower, was the United States at 1,929 and Britain at 1,888.
To deal with the high overtime rate, the government prepared a revision to the Labor Standards Law to increase pay for such work.
However, it also wrote another bill to exclude senior white-collar employees from overtime pay, the so-called white-collar exclusion. Management ranks are already excluded from overtime pay.
Strong public opposition to the exclusion forced the ruling bloc — the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito — to shelve the bill. But labor experts and unions fear it is only being held back so it won’t affect the bloc’s chances in the July House of Councilors election, and that after the poll they will submit it to the Diet.
“The issue will definitely come up again,” labor lawyer Ichiro Natsume said. “We must work harder to make the government give up the bill completely.”
The Ministry of Economy Trace and Industry and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government inspected Nova’s Osaka head office and several schools in February for allegedly charging high contract cancellation fees and on suspicion that it had given the government false information about its cancellation policy.
At that time, the government warned Nova it could be forbidden from enrolling new students if officials found clear evidence of more legal violations.
At least eight lawsuits have been filed against Nova to get the company to pay refunds, and the rulings have all favored the plaintiffs, according to the plaintiff’s lawyer in Tuesday’s case.
In one of the cases, a woman argued that the information Nova provided about its cancellation policy was insufficient, claiming it was written in tiny characters in hard-to-understand language in the contract.
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that major English school Nova Corp.’s method of settling early cancellations of its courses by using a higher unit price than when the contract was signed is illegal and violated the Specified Commercial Transaction Law.
The ruling followed a case brought by a 39-year-old man from Kita Ward, Tokyo, who tried to cancel a contract and demanded the company refund the 310,000 yen he said he was owed for classes he had not taken.
Presiding Justice Kohei Nasu ruled it is illegal to settle a contract by charging more for each unit taken than was agreed on when the contract was signed. He dismissed the appeal by Nova, and upheld and finalized the first and second rulings ordering the return of all the money demanded.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal filed by Nova Corp., saying the refund system of the nation’s largest English conversation school is invalid and violates the specified commercial transaction law.
The decision finalized the rulings of two lower courts that ordered Nova to refund about 310,000 yen to a former student, the full amount he was seeking.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200704040097.html
The top court on Tuesday dismissed an appeal by prominent English language school NOVA and ordered the group to return about 300,000 yen in prepaid tuition fees to a student who cancelled a contract.
NOVA’s tuition policy of selling classes on a point basis, with lessons becoming cheaper the more students buy, was at the center of the lawsuit.
The school had a policy of raising the price of lessons above the previously agreed fee should a student cancel a contract, thus reducing the amount it had to repay.
The Supreme Court ruled that NOVA should calculate the price of its classes on its initial rates.
The man, whose name is being withheld, paid 750,000 yen to NOVA in advance to buy points for 600 classes in 2001. The tuition fee per class was 1,200 yen.
He cancelled the contract in 2004 after finishing 386 classes. NOVA officials then said that the price of one class would come to 1,700 yen. The student claimed that NOVA should repay some 300,000 yen by calculating the price of the 386 classes at the rate set when he signed the contract.
The Supreme Court cited a law regulating commercial practices. The law provides that companies must not demand customers pay higher fees than previously agreed on if their clients cancel contracts midterm.
The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan says it received some 7,600 complaints or inquiries about NOVA’s contract and cancellation policies from 1996 to March this year.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070403p2a00m0na018000c.html
National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu - Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus - Legal