ET, ALT, AET, etc., etc.,
Parents, Students, Taxpayers…

ALL WELCOME to kick off our

NEW DEAL for ALTs campaign!
Monday, 27 June at 19:30 via zoom
sign up at: https://gu.generalunion.org/nda 

Speakers Include: Takatsuki City Councillor – Mr. Takagi, Union officials from across Japan, ALT/JET union members

Presentation Includes: Japan BoE ALT survey results, Campaign goals and objectives, Launch of National ALT Working Conditions Survey.

Let’s make sure that ALTs have DECENT WORK and are given the tools to provide QUALITY EDUCATION while keeping public education public and free of private dispatch.

Download our campaign leaflet and
SHARE WITH ALL YOUR ALT FRIENDS ACROSS JAPAN!

 Assistant Language Teachers have been in Japan since the 1970s. What began as a handful of participants on government exchange programs has become a system that employs almost 20,000 teachers  in positions from kindergartens through senior high schools. These teachers serve under a dizzying variety of job titles, contract types, employers, and work conditions all over Japan. 

• Private companies compete to win the lowest bid driving down salaries and standards. ALTs are left with low pay and often, no insurance.
• Changes in labor law have disadvantaged directly hired ALTs forcing them into unstable yearly contracts that must be re-interviewed for each year.
• JET Programme participants are forced out when their arbitrary contract limits expire, despite the fact that labour law changes forbid contract renewal limits. 

Lack of oversight and standardization has turned the ALT field into an unorganized race to bottom as salaries remain stagnant and positions increasingly unstable.  Seemingly paradoxically, this has been concurrent with rising standards in curriculum leading to increased workload and importance of language teachers. 

The ALTs deserve decent work and the Japanese teachers and students deserve decent ALTs who deliver quality education.

What does a decent ALT job look like? 

At the very least, a decent job is not in conflict with labor law and provides the mandated paid leave, employment insurance, and health and pension insurance due to all who work in Japan. 

For years, employers have fought and dodged these obligations to the detriment of ALTs and the Japanese taxpayer using tactics such as mislabeling employees as contractors or even breaking up companies to avoid regulations regarding health and pension insurance. 

ALTs should have the right to use their paid leave as they need. 

Many employers abuse the ability to schedule half of paid leave at the employers discretion. Most ALTs are in contracts without sick leave of any sort. The covid19 pandemic has forced teachers to make the choice between using their few precious days of paid leave or using unpaid leave. No one working with the public should be forced into that position.

A decent job has stability. 

Many ALT positions are year-to-year creations and treated as disposable. Dispatch companies bid for positions using the same system that provides school boards with desks and chairs. ALTs are shuffled from place to place to avoid the chance to take permanent positions or are forced to reapply for their own job year after year. ALTs need to know if they’ll have a job next year. Many employers, including the largest private employer, only notify ALTs weeks or even days before the end of a contract despite demanding a month’s notice from the employee. This is especially egregious given the rigid hiring season of Japan.

A decent job provides opportunities for growth. 

Many ALT positions do not have a defined pay scale or the opportunities for professional development that are standard in the education field. ALTs continue to become more experienced and valuable to their coworkers and students, but this is not reflected in their compensation. There is a massive gap between the wages of ALTs hired directly by boards of education, and privately hired ALTs employed by dispatch companies despite there being no functional difference in the duties and responsibilities of the two. In particular the bidding system of private dispatch positions has led to salaries that even single ALTs find impossible to live under, much less those supporting a family.

A decent teaching job follows the standards of other teaching jobs.

Despite being asked to perform similar roles in the classroom to other teachers, ALTs are denied many of the benefits and opportunities extended to other teachers. Teachers need access to professional development in order to continue to improve and share their craft with other teachers. While some employers have supplied training and professional development of varying quality, others expect ALTs to learn everything on the job. Exceptional ALTs often find that there is no path for promotion or increases in compensation regardless of qualifications or experience. Although there are MEXT approved paths to special and permanent licensure, these are not well understood or promoted by ALTs or boards of education.

A decent job has clear goals and expectations. 

MEXT has been unclear as to what exactly an ALT is, much less their role in the education system. The central government and BoEs must make clear what exactly it is that they want from the ALTs in their classrooms.

A decent ALT job would follow labor laws, have stability, provide opportunities for growth, set clear goals and expectations, and provide benefits similar to other teaching positions. 

In past years, some of these problems were forgivable as oversights. Foreign language standards were much lower and less was expected of ALTs, it was a new system. But the ALT has become a ubiquitous feature of the Japanese classroom across the nation.

The time of the gap-year ALT has long ended. Increasing demands on the students and teachers don’t allow it. The nearly 20,000  ALTs deserve decent jobs for the work they do. The teachers and students of Japan deserve decent ALTs. By setting a minimum standard of what a decent ALT job looks like, we can make this ad-hoc system with all its growing pains work better for everyone.