The union has made some progress in negotiations with Doshisha University and Doshisha Women’s College, mainly in clearing up a previously unanswered mystery: how long can a part-timer work at Doshisha?

And the answer is…

It depends on when you were hired.

Doshisha has finally clarified that those hired from 1 April 2016 are limited to nine renewals, and those hired before have no limitation on their renewals.

In collective bargaining, Doshisha maintained that all teachers had a nine-renewal limit. We finally now have a clear answer to the question.

But why a nine-renewal limit?

It sounds strange to us, and we know it sounds strange to Doshisha part-timers who were hired in 2016.

Doshisha has decided several things which we believe have been put in place to circumvent teachers’ rights to an unlimited term contract as outlined in the Labour Contract Law:

Paramount among these, they have decided that you cannot apply for an unlimited-term contract after five years of continuous employment as outlined in the law.

They have done this by designanting teachers as NINKI-TSUKI (basically: employees hired by a university to do a certain task, like research or an educational project that has a limited scope).

However, we all know that part-time instructors have one job: they teach.

The application of NINKI-TSUKI means that you have to wait ten years to get an unlimited term contract.

Therefore, we can all see the reason for the nine renewal limit.

This means that NO teacher hired from 2016 will ever get an unlimited term contract and will be let go after having worked ten years.

For those hired before 2016, this means that they will not get the benefits of an unlimited-term contract until 2023 at the earliest.

The union is now preparing a lawsuit to challenge the application of NINKI-TSUKI.

If you started work in 2016, we definitely want to hear from you.