PALE Journal Online

Welcome to the latest issue of the PALE Journal of Professional Issues. This is the second issue since the revamping of the site and we hope readers have found it easier to navigate. Comments and suggestions most welcome, please email us.

In this issue, we start with good news on the term-limit front. The General Union's struggle with the Nishinomiya Board of Education (NBE) over arbitrary term limits is introduced. We then revisit the Prefectural University of Kumamoto (PUK) case with an update provided by Farrell Cleary. Following this is a case well known in union circles but new to this journal, The EWA Otemae Case by Michael "Rube" Redfield, which illustrates the power and place of unionism at colleges and universities. We end with an update to the Kansai University case by David P. Agnew and an important development stemming from another EWA case that will impact labor relations throughout the country. Background on most of these cases is, as always, in our archive.

General Union Smashes Nishinomiya Board of Education Contract Limit
Courtesy the General Union

This is a reproduction of an article originally published in The National Union "Voice," Vol. 1, No. 6, October, 2002.

On October 15, the General Union received a simple document bearing the seal of the Nishinomiya Board of Education (NBE) stating that the five year contract limits imposed on foreign teachers working at the board would be lifted. Up to now, teachers employed by the board would only be allowed four contract renewals, but with our new agreement, the contract renewal limits are gone.

Sound simple? It was and it wasn't. It wasn't simple because it took the courage of the teachers involved to stand up and say that they wouldn't tolerate discriminatory limits on their employment terms any longer. The union members' thinking was reasonable; why should they lose their jobs once they're getting good at it, due to a unilateral policy which had no logic to it, especially in terms of quality of education. The General Union was preparing for a long fight over this issue, similar to the struggle over contract limits at the Higashi Osaka Board of Education from 1997 to 2000 (Lessons of Our Past below).

The NBE must also have been aware of our battle in Higashi Osaka and probably weren't prepared to have a similar problem at their school board. It was simple because the board had only a guideline on this issue, not a formal policy. Teachers were simply told that their employment would terminate after five years.

Once we found out that it wasn't the board's formal policy we knew that it could be changed without much of a fight, unless they made it a formal policy, which they never did. NBE foreign teachers will be informed formally on November 1st, in writing, stating that the policy in force up till now regarding contract renewals has been withdrawn.

Teachers were simply told that their employment would terminate after five years.

Nishinomiya teachers will now be able to work on improving their working conditions and their workplaces through union activity without having the five year limits hanging over their heads. The union now needs to use the victory at the NBE to win the withdrawal of contract limits at other workplaces, especially Kwansei Gakuin University, where we have a strong branch, which is also located in Nishinomiya. If you are having a similar problem with contract limits, and think that there is no way to deal with the problem, maybe you should think again.

On March 4, 1996, the Higashi Osaka Board of Education decided to introduce three-year contract limits for native English teachers. The teachers' first reaction was disbelief, since nobody could see any reasons for it. The board had been touting this program as a model and there was talk of other cities doing the same thing. It made no sense to turn out the most experienced teachers after three years. The teachers felt that their worth was not being recognized by bureaucrats who were not involved in the day-to-day process of education.

A General Union branch was declared one week after the announcement of the contract limits. Some teachers didn't join, mainly those who were planning to leave and didn't care. However, a few veteran teachers who were already planning to leave joined the union because the contract limits were wrong.

The demands included a pay rise and a teacher-training programme but may the focus should have stayed more strongly on ending the contract limits to make things less complicated. The demand for a training program was a good one because it showed teachers wanted to be good teachers.

Originally the Board of Education rejected arbitration by the Osaka Labour Commission, but later accepted it. The agreement that was reached was that the teachers who were currently employed would be taken on for two more years, and that this was a temporary measure which would be negotiated again in the future. At some negotiations the board seemed to want to settle the problem, but other times their attitude was, "No. No. No." Maybe they hoped teachers would give up and go. Throughout the dispute many demonstrations and leafletings were staged, including the use of a loudspeaker truck at the Board of Education.

Originally the Board of Education rejected arbitration by the Osaka Labour Commission, but later accepted it.

The mayor of Higashi Osaka was forced to resign in 1998 because of pension fraud. During the subsequent mayoral election the union approached the candidates, but only one, Mr. Nagao, was sympathetic and offered to meet the union whether he won or not. He ended up winning, but when he met with the teachers he said he would tell the board to negotiate but wouldn't interfere with their jobs.

Two teachers went on hunger strike on March 15, 1999. We called it off on doctor's advice after only two and a half days. We didn't receive as much publicity as we expected.

March 31 was the last day of one of the member's contract, but it was also the day that the superintendent of education was notified that his contract would not be renewed. There were rumours that he had tried to bribe the mayor into renewing his contract.

The members all fought hard, but in March 2000 it was accepted that our dispute was lost.

We must learn from both our successes and our failures, but if you think you're right, fight for it, and never give up. What happened at Higashi Osaka may mean that other education authorities won't want to go through the same thing. They know what we're capable of.

Hostile Verdict for Prefectural University of Kumamoto Teachers
by Farrell Cleary

On October 31, 2002, the Kumamoto District Court gave its decision in the suit for unfair dismissal brought by two teachers at the Prefectural University of Kumamoto.(1) The dismissal of the two teachers followed a seven year campaign by the two women and other foreign teachers at the PUK against a discriminatory, nationality-based employment system. One of the two plaintiffs, Dr. Cynthia Worthington, was in court to hear the judges dismiss the suit which she and Ms. Sandra Mitchell had brought in July 2000. In the words of the local newspaper, the Kumamoto NichiNichi Shinbun, in its report the following day, the court had "left the suitors at the gate", dismissing their arguments completely.

A negative verdict was always a probability. Dr. Worthington and Ms. Mitchell were public servants. According to the lawyers who had been acting for the plaintiffs and other foreign teachers at the PUK, no public servant has ever won a case for unfair dismissal in the history of post-war Japan. The teachers and their supporters had hoped though that the special features of the case would ensure that the court gave it a proper hearing and that there would be some comfort even in a negative decision. Accordingly, in spite of the negative verdict, it was with intense interest then that Dr. Worthington, other foreign teachers at the PUK, and members of the support group, gathered in the offices of lawyer Mr. Matsuno, to hear a reading of the verdict, along with a simultaneous English translation provided by Aya Chinen. At the end of the reading, there was only the cold comfort of knowing that the judgement was so bad that it could not be left unchallenged.

The three judges (Matsumoto, Horibe and Kubushiro) found that there had been no unfair dismissal because the teachers knew that their employment was for one year terms of appointment as "part-time special employees" and that they therefore could not complain when their appointments were not renewed. Because they were public servants and had been appointed, the judges found they could not acquire the right to continued employment through a number of renewals of contract as workers in the private sector might do. (However, as Gwen Gallagher, who was dismissed from a private sector university after a number of renewals, has found to her cost, being able to make the argument, by no means ensures that judges will listen to it.)

The decision whether to renew appointments was at the discretion of the university.

The court discounted the evidence that the plaintiffs, along with other one-year foreign teachers, had believed that they had been promised regular employment in documents they had signed before starting work at the new university in 1994. Although the documents, in which the teachers accepted regular employment and faculty affiliation, had been addressed to the Governor of Kumamoto, the court echoed the prefecture's argument that the documents signed were not relevant to employment and were exclusively involved with the accreditation of the new university and faculty with the Ministry. There was no recognition that these documents were at the very least misleading, nor any hint of judicial reproach for what the Ministry had seen as contradictory documents. There was no recognition of the invidious position of the teachers who were asked to sign documents clearly contradicting documents they had already signed months before.

The court was equally dismissive of the plaintiffs' arguments that the employment of the foreign teachers on "one year, irregular part-time" contracts was discriminatory as only the foreign teachers at the university were given such appointments. Once more, the court merely repeated the defence argument that the fact that Japanese administrative assistants were employed on similar contracts showed that it was not discriminatory. The university argument had appeared weak to the point of being ludicrous when it had been advanced, first by administrators and later by the Prefecture's lawyer. The fact that the judges repeated it without consideration is a sad commentary on the quality of judicial reasoning.

The court chose to ignore persuasive evidence of the university's capacity to discriminate against teachers on the basis of nationality, namely the fact that the university, at the time of the court's decision, was still applying three-year term limits to those of its regular teaching staff who happened not to be Japanese nationals, while none of its Japanese staff had such limits.

The above findings would have been enough to justify dismissing the case. The judges went even further. They accepted the arguments of the university that the teachers had been "not renewed" because of the "Review of Foreign Language Education" which President Teshima ordered in 1998, before the six "Foreign Teachers" were given notice in October of that year. The judges ignored the evidence that the President had given different reasons when he announced the dismissal of the teachers in October, 1998. At the time, committee charged with the review of English education had still not completed its deliberations, and the President knew that he could not use it to justify dismissal. Instead, he based his decision to abolish the six remaining one-year posts and replace them with a "few" regular posts on problems with the employment system, problems which had nothing to do with the issues being considered in the review of English education. When approached by a journalist at home after announcing his decision, the President was candid and mentioned the teachers' strike and the "confusion" this had caused in the university. The judges found it easier to ignore this than to deal with it. They likewise ignored the evidence of the confusion that followed the dismissal of the teachers: the university had been unable to find suitable part-time replacements for the dismissed teachers and, in desperation with the prospect of classes without teachers looming, employed a physiotherapist with no professional experience in the field to teach a full-time load of no less that six English courses during the 2000-2001 academic year.

Ironically, the judgement did not merely parrot the case of the university. It actually went further and dismissed even those of the plaintiffs' arguments which the university and prefecture had conceded over the years. While the prefecture had accepted that the teachers had been covered to some extent by the Labour Laws and the Trade Union Laws, the court would not concede even that. In other words, the right to form a union and the consequent right to strike was not endorsed by the judgement. The implications of this will not be lost on the millions of Japanese public employees on similar contracts, who have believed that they had the same labour law rights which were conceded by the prefecture to the foreign teachers. Unfortunately, the zeitgeist appears to moving away from employee rights. While there appears to be a growing recognition of the concept of human rights by Japanese judges, where this concept clashes with the discretion of employers to hire and fire at will, there seems little doubt that the will be given priority.

The dismissed teachers, lawyers, union officials and supporters have all agreed with the decision to appeal against the decision. Politically though, there appears little prospect that the Prefecture will soften its obdurate stance to the two teachers. In her first public comment on the case, the first woman governor of Kumamoto Prefecture, expressed satisfaction that the verdict had vindicated official actions (Kumamoto NichiNichi Shinbun, 1 Nov. 2002). In the long run however, the verdict and the policies of the Prefectural University will continue to harm Kumamoto and Japan's reputation throughout the educational and legal worlds.

Farrell Cleary taught at the PUK for eight years and at its predecessor, Kumamoto Women's University, for three years. He is at present in New Zealand pursuing his interest in postcolonial culture and learning Maori.

(I took no notes during the time this case unfolded, and so am not sure about the accuracy of the dates. The facts, however, are as I state them). 9/16/02

I am writing this narrative in the hopes that it contains certain applicable lessons for those with contract problems in Japanese academia. I detail the actions of a union, an academic institution, and some of the people in it. The names have not be changed, because the innocent require no special protection. Although this is the story of a single, particular case, I hope the lessons drawn from it will be helpful to others.

In the fall of 1988, I got a call from my friend and colleague, Professor Otsugi of Baika Women's College. Otsugi had introduced me to all of my current EFL jobs. He explained that Otemae Junior College was in a bind, and needed my help. They were all set to begin a new secretarial faculty, but needed someone with Ministry of Education recognition to fill the final, part-time, slot in their faculty. Three foreign candidates had already been rejected. The new facilities were already built, the other teaching faculty lined up, the curriculum approved, entrance exam dates set and the suisen (recommendation system) in place, but Otemae could not go ahead without filling the final slot with a qualified person. (In those days faculty at new departments, faculties, schools, etc. were strictly scrutinized by the Ministry of Education, which at this writing is no longer the case).

Knowing that I was on the Ministry's 'approved list,' Otsugi, who had gotten his academic start at Otemae, asked me to please help out by teaching two sections of 'Japanese-American Business Communication.' I agreed, on the condition that the classes be held on Saturday mornings, the only time I had available. A Mr. Kuroda, from the Otemae Women's College English department (Otemae is a 'Mom and Pop' institution, consisting of two colleges and currently one semmon gakko, owned and operated by the Fukui Family), called soon after to thank me, and to further inform me that they only thing I really needed to do was to fill out the forms. As a busy academic, I would not actually be required to teach the classes. They needed my Ministry of Education recognition, and were offering to pay me for them, without requiring that I actually show up for work!

Since I live near the Otemae Itami campus, work in the neighborhood Saturday afternoons (developing teaching materials for children), and actually enjoy teaching EFL, I took the job, informing Mr. Kuroda (since deceased) that I would indeed be showing up for classes. He promptly offered me a third class, teaching 'conversation' to, as it turned out, a class of over one hundred.

I began work the following spring, and everything was great. Mine were the only classes scheduled on Saturdays at first, and so I soon got to know the skeleton staff on duty those days, Otemae grads and a couple of old coots who only seemed to read the sports newspapers and watch the horse races on the office TV. We got along great, and the staff was always receptive to suggestions and requests that I may have had. I was even invited to several formal staff parties and dinners. Although Otemae later changed curriculum and eliminated my third class, my first ten years or so at the school was a very positive experience. That all changed in the late 1990s.

My colleague from Osaka University of Economics, Dave Bunday, worked at Otemae Women's College, in Nishinomiya. He came to me at OUE one day in 1997 and explained how Otemae were making large changes at the women's college, and how at least twenty part-time instructors were being terminated. Dave found this outrageous, and had formed an Education Workers and Amalgamated Union Osaka (EWA) branch at the Nishinomiya campus. Otemae countered by hiring expensive romuya (union busters). We exchanged notes (nothing so far had happened at my Itami branch) and agreed to keep in touch. Initially, Otemae would not budge, insisting that all instructors were on one-year contracts, and offered nothing. Because of the excellent contacts I had developed at the Itami branch, I was able to feed Dave and the EWA vital information on the state of the case from the Otemae viewpoint. After a struggle of almost one year, Otemae agreed to pay the dismissed EWA members (three out of the twenty instructors fired) their entire salaries for the year in dispute, and the equivalent of one year's additional salary as severance pay. End of dispute, I mistakenly assumed.

In the fall of '99 (I believe), I was called into a small conference room by Mr. Hasegawa, one of the major deans at the school, and the number two ranking officer at the junior college. He was very cordial, as opposed to the Otemae people in the original case (according to Bunday, they were invariably rude, overbearing, and verbally abusive). He simply said that enrollments were going to be down, and that changes had to be made. One of these changes would be no more part-time instructors. According to Ichiro, only tenured instructors and office staff would be teaching in the future.

Because of my contacts in the office, I knew both of these claims to be false. Otemae relies heavily on the suisen system, which in the past had accounted for over 80% of enrollment. Future enrollment was insured, at least for the next year. In fact, the school ended up over enrolled, with nearly twice as many students as they were allotted for by the ministry. And Hasegawa's son was already penciled in the faculty roll as a part-time Spanish instructor!

Naturally, I rejected resigning, and informed Otemae of my EWA affiliation. The meeting ended with smiles and handshakes all around. We agreed to let the EWA (in the form of Mr. Neo Yamashita) and Otemae (who brought in a retired dean of the Doshisha Law Faculty) work things out. I went on teaching Saturdays and things went smoothly until six weeks later that fall.

With no formal notice, I was called into the conference room after class late in the fall for a meeting with three Otemae administrators, to discuss charges of sexual harassment. Luckily, my contacts in the office, who were outraged by the whole affair, had emailed me in advance, so I was well prepared. The long and the short of it was, one student, accompanied by her mother, had gone to complain about me, for verbally abusing her about her expensive brand name bag. She was new to the class, and didn't know the routine. Otemae seized on this, and Mr. Yoshida of Student Affairs interviewed each member of the class. He also interviewed the student in question, twice. She had only gone to class once, so I don't even remember her, but regardless of her attendance, she proved to be a stand up girl. Yoshida wanted her to accuse me of sexual harassment, but she refused. She didn't owe me anything, but I guess she didn't owe Otemae anything either. Anyway, she was honest and refused to sign anything.

Otemae apparently thought that even the threat of charges of sexual harassment would be enough to cause me to resign. They must have hoped that the charges would come as a surprise and that I would give up on the spot. They even had their institution lawyer hiding (and listening in) from the adjacent room. Their biggest mistake was holding all the student interviews in the main office, in front of all the staff. Everyone could hear exactly what was going on, and let me know of the frame up well ahead of time. Still they had a long, detailed set of charges they wanted to quiz me on, drawn up and distributed among the three of them (I did not get a copy). Basically, I refused to talk to them, on the grounds that they were not classroom teachers and therefore not qualified to interpret classroom events. Since none of the students, who I met every week in class (and who found my accounts of the episode in the conference room hilarious) implicated me in sexual harassment, and the student in question had publicly denied it in front of the office staff, I figured I was in the clear. Neo said that he laughed at Otemae when they called him later to get my resignation in exchange for dropping the sexual harassment charges. Their guy then laughed, too.

Come January we were still at an impasse. EWA passed a strike motion for the 25th. I personally recruited a large number of educators to be at the strike, and of course EWA would get many more, along with their sound truck. I was at EWA headquarters when we got the call the night before. Otemae agreed not to fire me, promising me my same schedule for the next year. We therefore called off the strike. In this case, the threat of a strike, not the actual strike itself, was enough to cause capitulation.

I had finished my classes and turned in my grades by the time Otemae apparently threw in the towel. I waited all spring, however, for Otemae to send me the materials necessary to begin the next term. I need to make a book order, write course descriptions, etc. Neo could get nothing from them either, despite the fact that we were all seemingly in agreement. He was not worried, however, because he had the verbal agreement of the ex-Doshisha dean, a lawyer, and lawyers apparently do not lie about stuff like this in Japan. (In fact, the EWA relied on the Doshisha dean throughout the case, mainly because he was an honorable man and would not let Otemae get away with whatever they wanted).

By early April my patience had run out, and so I paid a visit to Otemae. They were in a panic, but finally Mrs. Fukui, wife of the school president, and Mr. Nagai, bagman (kabanmochi) to the president, agreed to meet with me. The office had been redecorated, and so I was lead to a new partition, open on the top to the rest of the office (where everyone was listening). I of course asked for the my schedule, anxious to get to work. Fukui and Nagai admitted that they had not included me among the teaching staff for the coming year (something I already knew) but asked me to work as a 'research professor,' with no hours, duties, or obligations. I accepted. It was as Neo had predicted. Otemae was going to pay me for not even showing up.

When I was teaching at Otemae, I would get a formal pay slip in the mail from the school every month. But now that I was a research professor, things had somehow changed. April went by with nothing from the school. I called Neo, and he looked into it. Somehow Otemae had neglected to pay me for April, but promised to pay two-months salary the next time around. The next month came and went, and still nothing. My informant in the office swore that Otemae was paying, so I went to the bank to check. Yes, there was two-months worth of salary paid into my account (which I only use for Otemae) but it did not come in as salary, and no taxes had been taken out.

The next Saturday, I went in to check. Saturdays are best for this, since there is only a skeleton staff there, and no muckitymucks. The only person in accounting was a low level guy (also a Fukui Family member, but then they all were). He didn't know what was going on, but he showed me books, and there it was, payment from Otemae to me, labeled 'union payoff.'

I guess the poor guy got into a bit of trouble for showing me the books, but Neo got everything settled right away after that, and I was once again getting regular salary pay slips.

I didn't hear anything else whatsoever from Otemae the rest of that year, so I decided to show them how much work I had done for them. I sent the college president an e-mail, with a list of all the papers I had written for the past year (fifteen, but I included three from the year before), and all the presentations (five, including one overseas). I signed it 'Otemae Research Professor.' A couple of weeks later, I came home to a registered letter from the president's mother, Director of the Board of Regents (and owner of the school). She informed me that I was merely a part-time lecturer, and was never to refer to myself as an Otemae Research Professor again. She signed it with a strong 'chui.' Mrs. Fukui Sr. had never answered any of my other letters, but I guess she felt pretty strongly about me taking the title her daughter-in-law and her personal bagman had offered me.

In April of 2001, my second year as research professor, I met with Mrs. Fukui Jr. and Mr. Nagai for the final time. They had called me earlier to find out when I could come in and meet them. It was a late Monday afternoon, after I had finished four classes elsewhere. When I got to the school, the office was closed, and there were guards out. Otemae had never had security before. I found out later that they had shut the office at three, sent everybody home, and contracted with a security firm for guards for the entire day, just for me. Can never be too sure how a non-Japanese might act when you try to fool him on your home turf.

Mrs. Fukui met me at the door, and tried to stir me to a back hall conference room, but I brushed past her, intent not on mayhem, but simply on greeting the staff. She went into full panic mode, but recovered when she realized that most of the staff had already been sent home. Anyway, we went to a conference room, where I was presented with a contract to sign. Told it was a mere formality, I said that I couldn't sign what I didn't understand, and would bring it home. They wanted me to sign that day, as it was of extreme importance (to them). When I politely refused, they got out a stamp to attach to the envelope (I guess they figured they would save the price of a stamp if I signed as initially expected), and said to have my wife look it over before signing and returning it as soon as possible. When I said I would have my union lawyer look it over instead, they knew the game was over.

The contract basically said that I would be employed for one more year maximum, and would then be terminated. There was also a list of eight conditions for termination before the end of the year. I guess they figured on paying me nothing. After all, look at how much money they had already spent on the stamp, the guards, and the ex-Doshisha Dean. At any rate, I didn't sign, and had no more contact with Otemae. They had their big 50th (or something) anniversary parties (two of them), inviting everyone who had ever taught at Otemae, plus a number of luminaries, but not me. But I was still being paid.

To cut this short, Otemae fired me in January 2002 and replaced me with contract 'teachers' from the commercial language school, ECC (which was the whole plan from the beginning). I refused to be fired, we went through this whole legal kabuki, and it finally got down to money. Neo advised that if we went to court we might not win, since by that time my original faculty no longer existed. We decided to settle, which Otemae wanted all along. They offered 1,500,000 Yen initially, 1,000,000 Yen to the union (for decertifying Otemae, even though I was the only union member) and 500,000 Yen to me. When I told Neo that we were unionists, not merchants, he asked me what I wanted. Five years severance for me (3,500,000 Yen) and whatever we could get for the union. We got 4,000,000 Yen in total.

The first moral of the story is easy. Join an effective union, preferably before trouble occurs. I was in the EWA, and they made my two years as research professor (with no duties or obligations) and five years of severance pay possible. The second is schools are not always honest. They lie (about enrollment, faculty makeup), coerce (bogus sexual harassment accusations), and try cheating (salary pay slips labeled 'union payoff') and trickery (producing 'unfavorable' documents you can't read for immediate signature). In other words, they play games. I didn't take any of them as personal, and I believe they really didn't either. And finally, it helps to have friends. I had excellent relations with the Otemae junior staff, and they made sure to keep me informed every step of the way. Just because they are in the 'enemy camp' does not make them 'the enemy.'

In a sentence, join an active union, don't believe what the institution tells you (but listen to your friends, and don't sign anything), and you too might be asked to write up your positive experience for PALE.

Rube Redfield has taught in the Kansai area for more than twenty years. He is also an under appreciated pro football commentator on cable TV.

Update to the Kansai University Labor Dispute and Prosecution
by David P. Agnew

The Osaka Labor Relations Commission (OLRC) meeting in September saw EWA and KU rest their cases after a year of deliberations. OLRC had given both parties a list of questions to help them reach a decision on the case. Written responses were submitted and another hearing was held on November 26, 2002. The next meeting will take place at the end of January when the final written submissions for the commission will be handed in and OLRC will be in a position to make a decision. Background to this case can be found in the Summer 2002 issue of the PALE Journal.

The prosecution of KU continues but I am not permitted at this time to give any details about the case.

November also saw the Central Labor Relations Commission (CLRC) recognize EWA as a true trade union. This historic decision allows for a joint union for public servants and private sector workers. The EWA received a decision from the Central Labor Relations Commission on October 30 regarding the Suita Board of Education case. It ruled that amalgamated unions such as EWA (composed of both public servants and private sector workers) are true trade unions protected completely by the Trade Union Law. This decision strikes down the OLRC's contention that EWA is a public servant organization and is only protected by Trade Union Law in cases where its members are unfairly discharged or otherwise treated in a disadvantageous manner by reason of such worker being a member of a trade union, having tried to join or organize a trade union, or having performed proper acts of a trade union (Trade Union Law Article 7-1). Thus, the OLRC has lost face and will be forced to consider seriously the unfair labor practice cases caused by Kansai University and other universities against EWA. The CLRC decision will also have far reaching ramifications for foreign teachers that have found themselves in legal limbo. (Korst)

On a disappointing note, supporters of the KU dispute have found themselves under pressure to cut their ties to EWA or else face dire consequences. It has been brought to our attention that senior foreign teachers and others at schools in the Kinki region are using their role in assigning classes and the hiring process to intimidate teachers. Yet another example of unfair labor practices. Teachers in the Kinki region should stand their ground as should we all!

David P. Agnew has taught in the Kansai area for more than a decade and is actively pursuing employment equality for foreign teachers in Japan.

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