The survey was conducted online between September and December 2014 and was sent to all union members to complete and disseminate amongst their co-workers and friends. The survey was also advertised on a host of internet forums where teachers tend to visit.

Those sites included mainly JALT (Japan Association of Language Teachers) and local JALT chapter sites, and ETJ (English Teachers Japan) which clearly shows up the survey as the survey was heavily answered by those working in universities and private language schools while there is an absence from those working in language teaching in other workplaces.

We received 489 responses, but 24 of those who were working solely in kindergartens or office and commercial settings were eliminated. The reason for this was the survey group for those in these settings were too small to be helpful to the survey, so respondents in these settings were only included if they also worked as teachers in the workplaces listed above. Also, seven who are currently not living in Japan were also automatically deleted in the survey.

In the future we will have to try to get the survey in the hands of the growing number of teachers in schools, especially those ALTs who are dispatched by private companies, and kindergartens.

While we may not know the ages of those working in these industries, our high turn out of university respondents probably also raised the average the respondents’ ages and length in Japan, as those working in universities tend to have been in Japan much longer than language teachers. This is also reflected in the high number of respondents who are married and have acquired permanent residency

While a self selecting survey can never be completely accurate, we hope that the 445 respondents will give us a good snapshot of those working as teachers throughout Japan.

A few very interesting points were also revealed in the survey.

One, wages for those working in language schools have greatly stagnated with the majority still earning 3 million per year which is no different than when the requirement to obtain a visa was three million per year. There is also a growing number of those teachers now working for under 3 million per year.

Self reporting of wages and living standards also shows a majority whose wages have either remained the same or even declined and the majority stating that the have little or no job security.

The number of those, now enrolled in Shakai Hoken & Shigaku Kyosai, and employment insurance also tends to have greatly grown. While there is no way to compare these figures scientifically, the union’s own straw polls from our campaigns in the early and mid 2000s showed that many were not enrolled in any of these insurances. While this is good news, there are still a large number of those working, even full time, without the insurances mandated by law.

In the future, a few issues will need to be corrected in the way the survey is conducted.

We have already highlighted that the sites we used for advertising the survey may have led us to a group of teachers who are usually more economically secure and have been in Japan longer. How this can be corrected is something we will need to consider.

Also, due to the number of those on the survey who are not in full time employment, we will need a more comprehensive survey so we can map out respondents jobs and their economic satisfaction with those jobs.

We hope that this survey can act as a source to highlight member and non member concerns and identify certain issues around which the union can be involved in future organising.

If you would like more information about the survey, please contact General Union chair, Dennis Tesolat at tesolat (at mark) generalunion.org

Download it in pdf at www.bit.ly/greatwagesurvey