In a letter dated Friday February 22, 2008 and received February 25th, the BOE gave all NETs until February 27th to decide whether or not to accept a temporary 4 month contract instead of the one year contract negotiated on February 7th. If we didn't sign, we were told we would have no job.
Steven Thompson, OFSET General Secretary, had a unsettling telephone conversation with our manager, Keiji Nishida, on February 28th.
The picture of our tenuous job situation is disturbing.
When asked how many NETs would be cut permanently from the
program he said he didn’t know.
When asked if there were anything NET teachers could do to help, he
said, emphatically, “No.” When
asked why he didn’t tell us earlier, he said he didn’t have the power to make
that decision or share that information.
When I asked directly, “Who in the BOE has the power to make decisions
about NET jobs—is it our boss, Nishida or his boss, Fukunaga, or his boss,
Namikawa, or his boss, the very, very top of the high school
division, Kazuyuki Kuriyama—who has the power?” He answered, tersely, and I quote, “Nobody in the BOE has
the power to determine whether NET jobs will be available after July.” So, I asked, “It wouldn’t help to arrange a meeting with you or other
BOE personnel and disaffected NETs to work things out, would it?” (I explained that disaffected means the
feeling one gets when treated poorly by an employer) He answered, “No, we cannot change anything.”
So,
you might guess my next question: “Who should OFSET negotiate with to keep our
jobs?” His answer: “Only Governor Hashimoto can decide.” I was
surprised. I had expected Kazuyuki Kuriyama
to have more influence and thus our manager to have SOME influence. But for nobody in the BOE to have any
influence.
It sounds like all future negotiations must include the Governor. Why waste our time at the BOE?