So, I'm going through my news feeds, checking up on the news, when I come across this CBC news story about the nasty sales tactics of Canada's banks. It's definitely scandalous, but I couldn't help but think that they ripped a few pages out of the eikaiwa sales playbook.
Although I haven't been active updating this blog since the collapse of Nova and GEOS, I do get email and questions about what has been going on in eikaiwa. It turns out, not much has changed.
This is for you GEOS fanatics that can't get enough of the defunct school:
A JAPANESE-owned English language school has been ordered to pay one of its managers compensation of €30,000 and to increase her salary in line with that of a male counterpart.
The school, trading as GEOS Ireland, was found to have discriminated against Nerea Medrano on a number of grounds, including gender and family status.
Over the past 10 years, LJ has gone from being a website that tried to warn others about the pitfalls of working for GEOS, to documenting the criminal activities that are a part of eikaiwa, large and small schools alike.
The March 19th edition of the Toyo Keizai magazine reports an embarrassing situation for G.communication.
According to the article (see attached PDF), G.com was looking to raise to some money last October, so it sought financing from Yohohama-based BOW Networks and put up a sizable chunk of its shares in G.Taste, G.Networks, and Yakiniku Saki as collateral. The shares amounted from around 4 to 10 per cent of G.com's issued stock and had a value at the time of about 500 million yen.
Three years after the collapse of Nova, there is finally some closure on the matter. Teachers are being paid after the Osaka High Court sentenced him to two years in prison for "corporate embezzlement."
Time to blow the cobwebs off this blog and talk about James McCrostie's article in the Japan Times two weeks ago on the General Union's scrap with Gaba.
The General Union says it has established a Gaba Branch and is accusing Gaba of lying when it stated in a financial report that there was no union and that labor relations were good. By all accounts in the article, this should be a slam dunk for the union, until you read this part:
His lawyers still maintain that he is innocent and that his use of money from an employees' fund was to pay refunds and therefore does not amount to embezzlement. Sahashi was originally sentenced to three and half years for the crime.
As of October 1st, Interac will cease to exist, being bought out by Advantage Partners. This comes from the General Union, which cites an August 24 official government gazette containing the notice of the buyout. More about the buyout can be found on ESL Cafe and Hoofin's blog.
