ECC Corporate

It appears that ECC Corporate is still involved in illegally withholding compensation from its' English teachers as a routine practice. A practice which is illegal in Japan. Below is a slightly redacted copy of an ECC part-time instructor's contract from 2015 in Japan. Please note the rate of compensation is 3,500 yen/hr. At the interview, instructors are assured 4,000 yen/hr; this amount is held back as a "completion bonus" and paid at the end of the contract. Naturally, if an instructor fails to complete the contract 500 yen/hr for each hour worked is lost. However, item (9) of ECC's contract for part-timers clearly states - "a bonus, a lump-sum payment, or a retirement payment shall not be paid". This illegal withholding of compensation is clearly an attempt to drive down instructor compensation.

If an instructor complains about this illegality they lose contracts and are not offered new ones. In effect reducing incomes to zero. Unfortunately, for ECC, this practice makes it difficult to attract and retain teaching talent past the interview stage. As a result, some ECC Corporate instructors are not even native English speakers. Some are even former ECC language students. And, are even more poorly compensated than native English speakers.

Thanks for sharing this!

So under what circumstances are they holding back that "completion bonus"? And how would an instructor "fail to complete the contract"?

If taken to court, I'd think the bolded completion bonus in paragraph 1 would win.

All three contracts are from 2015. Is this still happening? I don't see anything about on the ECC union webpage.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was still happening, companies play games like this all the time. It's even more damning that the contract actually contradicts itself!

The only way you could practically get the money would be to go through a labour union like the General Union and Tozen. You could do it yourself by going to the 労働基準局 or something but you'd have to be fluent in Japanese and very patient. However, as it's a monetary issue it'll probably be treated quite seriously (in my experience, anyway).

To be honest, teaching in Japan is becoming less and less attractive every day. People can't afford to pay for lessons in person and Skype lessons are undercutting all the chains but all that's going to happen is they'll find ways to cut corners (like this) until they implode. Berlitz is having trouble recruiting now apparently because they've started running their employees into the ground from the get-go and pay almost the same as a convenience store... and they're one of the better places to work!

Deibiddo said:

Berlitz is having trouble recruiting now apparently because they've started running their employees into the ground from the get-go and pay almost the same as a convenience store... and they're one of the better places to work!

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Late reply, but I'm surprised and saddened to hear that about Berlitz.

If any of the eikaiwa are still reasonable places to work, which offer the best employment experience for the teachers?

Still Berlitz I reckon, unfortunately....

Vincent3 said:

Late reply, but I'm surprised and saddened to hear that about Berlitz.

If any of the eikaiwa are still reasonable places to work, which offer the best employment experience for the teachers?

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I'll give a cautious thumbs up to Shane. I've not heard any teacher in Japan ever enthuse about the English language schools they've worked for. I did two years at Shane a long time ago (starting in 2003). It wasn't a great company but it wasn't that bad either. I have friends who've worked there a long time without problems who'd probably say a similar thing. I've not heard any horror stories about the place for a long time and nor do they pressure teachers to sell courses as some of the schools have done. I noticed the US flag under your name - they used to be a bit sniffy about American teachers, with British English being their selling point, but I don't think that's a problem these days. One more thing - they're only in the Kanto area.