General Union and Gaba Corporation sign grievance procedure agreement

Under the Trade Union Law, companies in Japan must hold collective bargaining with unions. But they are not legally required to deal with individual problems raised by employees. In other words, if you wanted to legally ensure that you were heard at Gaba, an English language school, you needed to submit collective bargaining requests through the union, decide on a date, then spare a day, have a prior-approved agenda, a translator, and approximately six volunteers to argue your case.

That all changed on October 4, when we signed a collective agreement with Gaba. We now have a shiny new grievance policy which legally requires the company to reply to individual grievances in a fair and prompt manner.

Union members can now bring problems to a GU representative who will contact Gaba via email, fax or mail. If necessary, meetings can still be held to help resolve the problem.

We're hoping that this will allow the GU to raise more issues with Gaba, and lead to real improvements for instructors who are experiencing problems. We've already been able to solve a major problem for one instructor under the system.

English conversation school GABA urged to follow the Labor Relations Commission order! Instructors start publicity action

GABA, an English conversation school, has been contracting with 800 foreign instructors mostly in a form of consignment with an individual business operator instead of employment by GABA, which is not reflecting the actual operation, making the only such case among major companies of the same trade. Thus, complaints were flooding into the Multilanguage Center of the General Union, saying, "There is no paid annual leave or health insurance coverage." The Union filed a case of violation of Article 7 of the Labor Standards Law with the Osaka Prefectural Labor Relations Commission. In December 2009, the Commission issued an order recognizing that "the instructors are workers and employees." This established the employment relations and the applicability of the respective laws concerned including the Labor Standards Law and a law for coverage of public health insurance. Nevertheless, the company has not complied with the order yet. "We won't even have any safety net benefits like out-of-work insurance, pension and forward payment of unpaid wages." So these instructors have started publicity activities communicating with the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the Labour Bureau, employment agencies, tax offices and the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission. (Yamahara at General Union) - Webpage of the General Union

英会話のGABAは労働委員会命令に従え！～講師たちが通報活動を開始
　英会話GABA＝ガバは、大手で唯一800名の外国人講師の大半を「雇用とせず、委託＝一人親方」とし、実態と違う契約をしてきた。そのため「年休や健保がない」等の苦情がゼネラルユニオンの多言語相談センターに殺到していた。ユニオンは大阪府労働委員会に、労組法7条違反で申立てたが、2009年12月に「講師は労働者＝従業員」と認定した命令が出た。これで雇用関係と労基法・公的保険など各法令適用が確定したが、未だ会社は命令に従っていない。「このままでは、失業保険・年金・未払賃金立替払など一切のセイフティネットさえない」と、講師達は、厚労省・労働局・職安・税務署・証券取引等監視委などへの通報活動を開始した。（ゼネラルユニオン・山原） ・ゼネラルユニオンHP