Decisions, decisions, decisions...

The Good:
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics has been officially postponed til 2021 amidst the current COVID-19 global pandemic.

The Bad:
The Osaka Board of Education (BOE) continues to support the decision for NETs to “inevitably” have their working conditions worsened under the new Fiscal Year Appointed Employee policy (kaikei nendo ninyo shokuin or KNNS) from April 2020.

The Ugly:
The Osaka BOE continues to claim that their decisions are in accordance with the National Government’s guidelines to ensure that the working conditions of all regular part-time employees are improved. However, they continue to disregard the fact that all regular part-time employees work varying hours and have distinctive responsibilities and therefore, it is extremely unrealistic to have them ALL share the same working conditions.

This means, under the new KNNS system, NETs who already work hours comparable to full-time employees, will be forced to share the same general working conditions with those who work the minimum amount of hours necessary to qualify as a part-timer (e.g. 1 hour).

The conditions under the new KNNS system may be considered “equal”, but they are exceedingly unfair. Some include:

1) Sick-leave suddenly becoming unpaid. This disregards the health and well-being of NETs who are more regularly exposed to illness and general overwork as teachers, and who can’t afford to risk losing a day’s pay in order to meet basic living expenses for themselves and their families.

2) Despite being foreign nationals working in Japan, no allowance has been made to cater for the travel time necessary for NETs to return to their home-countries in cases of bereavement.

The Osaka BOE has stated that the fate of NETs has now become a part of a unanimous decision making process involving other divisions/departments affected by the KNNS system, some of which have no relation to the education sector.

TL;DR- After almost 2 years of negotiations, all the Osaka BOE have to show is that bureaucratic decisions supersede logic, efficiency and fairness. The best interests of their hardworking NETs and English education in Osaka seem to be of little interest to the Osaka BOE.