Gaijin teacher held incommunicado!

[LeBlueBoy]

Surely paying different people different wages for the same job is unfair practice.

Not always. The local cost of living for the employees in one city may be far more reasonable than the cost of living for employees living elsewhere. An increase in qualified individuals applying for the same position may bring the starting pay down (lowering the wages is one way of reducing the candidate pool so an employer can spend less time interviewing and more time hiring). A candidate who has previous experience with a rival company may be worth more in the same position than one who recently graduated from college. Location, demand, and experience are all fair methods to determining how much a particular employee is worth to the company, even in the same position.

The truth is the best leveller in the market.

Absolutely, and the truth eventually comes out. The problem is that dishonest practices disrupt a whole lot of lives before they're eventually exposed. Capitalism works a lot better when companies are honest with their employees and their customers. It makes the levelling process run a lot smoother.

[BakaMike]

I enjoyed your reply MT but I just wanted to touch on a couple of points...

OK. So let me give you a scenario: You go to Daiei and buy a vacuum cleaner for 10,000 yen. You think it`s a little expensive but you really need it and you haven`t the time or knowledge required to find another retailer. You then show your friend your new vacuum cleaner and he tells you that he bought the same model for half the price you paid, on the same day, from the same shop. He then shows you a whole range of the goods he has been buying from there for the last month and all of these were half the price you paid. Would you go back to Deiei and complain or would you just never shop there again?

There are a number of problems with this analogy. First, I think it may well be illegal for a store like Daiei to charge customers different prices for the same goods. Second, Daiei would never do that, because it would destroy their reputation. Third, it wouldn't take but about five minutes to check how much a vacuum cleaner should cost. I could either (1) go to a nearby store, (2) check on the Internet from home, or (3) call a friend.

More importantly, though, is the fact that Daiei is a retailer, whereas an eikaiwa teacher is a contractor. A better analogy would be me hiring a contractor to redo the bathroom in our house. Do contractors offer different customers different prices? I would expect they would try to get as much as they think they can. If a contractor told you that a job would cost $10,000, would you just say Ok and let him get to work? I would check around and get an estimate from a second company.

OK. The biggest problem with this is that you are comparing different contractors. This is the same company. To use your example you would have to imagine buying an identical bathroom from the same company that did another persons bathroom at the same time for half the price.

Now, I agree that you would be partly responsible for not shopping around but that`s difficult to do when you are in a foreign country. Anyway, my point was: Assuming you were happy with the company`s work and it was difficult to find another company, would you ask them to do your dining room at the same price they were going to do your friends for, or would you just find another company?

In a perfectly competitive market all information is shared by buyers and sellers.

No, it's not. Buyers and sellers do not share all information.

Err, Yes it is!

I refer you to the following article:http://www.tutor2u.net/economics/content/topics/monopoly/perfect_competition.htm

Specifically this:

Main Assumptions of Perfect Competition
・Each firm produces only a small percentage of total market output. It therefore exercises no control over the market price. For example it cannot restrict output in the hope of forcing up the existing market price. Market supply is the sum of the outputs of each of the firms in the industry
・No individual buyer has any control over the market price - there is no monopsony power. The market demand curve is the sum of each individual consumer痴 demand curve ・essentially buyers are in the background, exerting no influence at all on market price
・Buyers and sellers must regard the market price as beyond their control
・There is perfect freedom of entry and exit from the industry. Firms face no sunk costs that might impede movement in and out of the market. This important assumption ensures all firms make normal profits in the long run
・Firms in the market produce homogeneous products that are perfect substitutes for each other. This leads to each firms being price takers and facing a perfectly elastic demand curve for their product
・Perfect knowledge ・consumers have perfect information about prices and products.
・There are no externalities which lie outside the market

Or to put it in another way: "All information regarding prices and products is shared by all buyers and sellers. I`m not saying that they do the sharing I`m just saying that the information is shared.

Edit: Quotes were attributed to wrong person.

[Ojii]

Did you go to the Reverend D. school of argumentation?

Actually I got my street smarts from you.

Many have written different forms of economic theory in their postings but there is no need to go that route. This situation is simple. The owner is just trying to CHEAT a naive girl out of the wage 'norm'. She is directly providing misinformation to this girl and she was angered when Ms. Senseiman wouldn't do so.

You can use all of those BIG WORDS mixed with a bunch of COMPLEX THEORIES and MUMBLE JUMBLE but it just won't hide the simple fact that this owner is just plain sh t.

[Smurfette]

Capitalism works a lot better when companies are honest with their employees and their customers. It makes the levelling process run a lot smoother.

Exactly.

[Melodious_Thunk]

BakaMike,

I'm aware of the concept of "perfect information" in economics. That assumes that the buyer and seller have access to the same information, not that they actively share information with each other.

In addition, I would bet that even the same contractor would try to get different amounts of money for the same job from different people, so I think that's a valid analogy.

Ojii, I never said the owner wasn't a a douchebag. I even went so far as to state that I would not want to work there. I don't, however, think paying people a different wage for the same job is immoral. Nobody is making the girl work for a low wage. If she wants to do so, that's her own problem.

[Norainu]

This is quite an interesting thread.

I applaud your wife's moxy in this case and believe such an attitude is a valuable asset to any worthwhile company. (Worthwhile is subjective in my case not a business 101 definition).

Anyone who thinks the so called market will take care of itself has probably never been inside the ivory tower in a meeting of the board to see just how much manipulation goes into it producing just what the traffic will bear.

I have recently started my own English services business and so far so good. I have the support of both the Japanese and the foreign community.

Perhaps if this business owner had a shred of respect for the human being behind the position she would have said this is a probationary wage where you will be given the opportunity to prove yourself as an asset to the business.

Instead these locals try and scam wherever they can. What that fuels this mentality is the attitude on both sides.

[AforesaidPuck]

<devil's advocate>
Paying different people different salaries is potentially in line with their skills and knowledge. If someone has a degree or certification they should, respectively, be paid more than someone who lacks said certification.

Everyone should be paid the same for the same job is a 'union' concept and has the effect of negating individual merit. In much the same way that pay raises are 'identical' for many union jobs at a given point in the job track for identical jobs. Someone who is of a higher skill level should be paid commiserate with their skill. If they are a 'No Skills Hack' then their pay should justly match.
</devil's advocate>

However that said, there is a substantial difference between someone outright lying to them and saying "I am legally unable to pay you more than X amount" if it is not true and someone making adjustments within a range of legitimate hourly or lesson rates.

If she is being paid 1500 a lesson, and she is able to manage 40 lessons a week she would make ballpark about 240,000 a month. Which is where I'm betting the "Legal" comment came from. (i.e. 250k a month salary)

Unfortunately the merit pay concept (i.e. pay for skills) can be severely misused. And likewise the 'minimum pay' concept can be misused as well. One can end up with people with no qualifications in any shape or form working at the equivalent of an 'English Mill' where people with no language experience are shuffled in one end of the pipe, leveled up through repetition or sheer stupidity and shuttled out the other end with little more real knowledge.

That said, I do hope Mrs. Senseiman doesn't end up having to do more than a few sumimasen. And that Mrs. X doesn't cause more problems for her.

Obviously Mrs. X wasn't reading from the proper documentation and should have failed as an 'Evil Overlord.'

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. -- Abraham Lincoln

[senseiman]

NEWS FLASH.

OK, I've met the 'newbie chick' and have gotten myself better acquainted with the lay of the land. First off, let me just say that I think newbie chick is an idiot. I have two reasons for thinking this. Its kind of a complicated situation, but she seems to have been suckered by an ad in her paper back home for a volunteer teaching position in Japan. This volunteer scam has nothing to do with Mrs X, she comes into the picture later. The deal she has is this; in exchange for spending 4 hours a day 5 days a week teaching Elementary school kids she gets free accomodation. Only this is no school for poor kids or anything, its a regular for-profit kiddie Eikaiwa owned by an extremely wealthy businessman. He owns 5 houses, one of which is vacant and he lets her use. Other than use of the house, she gets absolutely nothing. Kind of a brilliant scheme really, it costs the guy absolutely nothing and he gets a quasi-full time native speaker. So, Mrs. X comes into the picture now because, not getting any money from her volunteer position, idiot newbie has no way to feed herself (she gets room only; not board). The kiddie Eikaiwa owner has some sort of deal with Mrs. X in which he lets newbie work for her in order to earn a little money to pay for food, etc. But he benefits from this too, because Mrs. X pays newbie teacher's salary (1500yen/hour)directly to the Kiddie Eikaiwa owner, who then takes a cut (300yen/hour) and then passes on whats left (1200yen/hour) to the teacher.

So, this chick is getting royally screwed. It just boggles the mind how anyone could be so stupid as to have taken such a bad position when paying positions were easily available. Anyway, my second reason for thinking she is an idiot is because she confronted her boss at the kiddie Eikaiwa (not the owner, but the head teacher) about this whole pay thing the other day. She was really upset (naturally), but instead of saying the right thing ("I'm finding it hard to make ends meet, can you help me get a raise?") she - remember that this 23 year old psyche major was not talking to the owner but the head teacher, a Japanese woman with 20 teaching experience who has had nothing to do with ripping newbie off - said the wrong thing ("I don't get it. My English is waaay better than yours, why don't I make more money than you?").

Naturally, this didn't help things much, so she went to plan B, which apparently was to drag my wife down with her by saying she was complaining too (a lie, by the way, my wife sympathized but never complained). So head teacher calls Mrs.X and tells her everything and Mrs. Senseiman gets a rather irate call today from Mrs. X wanting to know what the hell is going on. Fortunately she was able to smooth things over and nobody's job is on the line, but boy what a fucking ass-hole that newbie was to go getting my wife into trouble after all she had done to help her.

Two words for the wise. 1. Don't get suckered into scummy fake 'volunteer' positions. 2. Don't help those that do, because they are stupid and will likely screw you over.

[valve-bouncer]

Oh god, what a fucken idiot SM, this sheila almost (almost) deserves everything she gets. I hope you give her a good bollocking but the people who really deserve bollocking are the two cunts in cahoots with each other. Scum of the fucken earth taking advantage of people like that, idiots or not.

[BakaMike]

I`ve gotta agree with VB on this! This girl deserves pretty much averything she gets! She`s not too bright for a psyche major is she!?!

Anyway, we got an interesting thread out of it. Thanks SM!

[PHONICS]

I have recently started my own English services business and so far so good. I have the support of both the Japanese and the foreign community based on some basic principles of business practice I have utilized previously in more than a few countries.

You don't have my support, so you must be talking out your odiferous sphincter.

You sound like one of those Amway nuts!!!!

This side track has been brought to you by

Now everybody back to topic!!!!!

[Norainu]

I have recently started my own English services business and so far so good. I have the support of both the Japanese and the foreign community based on some basic principles of business practice I have utilized previously in more than a few countries.

You don't have my support, so you must be talking out your odiferous sphincter.

You sound like one of those Amway nuts!!!!

This side track has been brought to you by

Now everybody back to topic!!!!!

Lol
My last business was in the automotive industry.