To: Tim Carr, Karen Thomas, Doug Wallingford and the Board of Directors

From: The ASIJ Teachers' Union

May 27, 2004

First, Karen, we are sorry to see you leave and the ASIJ community will lose your enthusiasm and heartfelt concern.  We encourage those who follow to keep your vision of greater Board transparency growing and ultimately come to fruition.

A recap of where we, the ASIJ Teachers' Union, are:

The ASIJ Teachers' Union was formed on April 22, 2002 for the following three reasons:

• The unilateral changes in employment practices and policies by the Board and Administration.
• The lack of any meaningful dialogue and legal protection of the teaching staff.
• To legally protest the Board/Administration's firing of teachers at the age of 60 and above (as happened in November 2001) by changing the interpretation, implementation and wording of the ASIJ 1964 Retirement with Extensions Policy.

After the Union was formed in April 2002, three Union sponsored letters were sent to the Board, several individual's personal letters were forwarded, 4 dankos (information gathering meetings) and 5 Japan Labor Board arbitration meetings have been conducted.

After all these meetings we continue to believe there is no valid reason why we should now be earning the same wages and retirement as we did approximately 25 years ago at ASIJ.  Would you wish to be in this situation?

From the beginning of these meetings, the new interpretations of the retirement policy, unilaterally put forth by the Board/Administration, were said to be based on financial, rejuvenation, and evaluation concerns.  These have been shown to be invalid and/or admittedly in error--see the further comments in the Addendum.  In addition, the treatment we have received has not supported open and honest dialogue designed to resolve this issue.   

To summarize:

The retirement policy changes:

• are not financial,
• are not rejuvenation,
• are not evaluation,
• are a new interpretation of policy--as admitted by the Board Chair.  It has not been past practice to terminate a teaching career for reaching the age of 60,
• have taken hundreds of hours in unnecessary discussion of this issue because of all the untruths told and stonewalling tactics of the Board's representatives. 

All of these statements and observations are documented on the Union's web site www.asijtu.tripod.com.

Fukuyama-san (our Union representative) has, as of today, May 27, 2004, faxed the official Union proposal to Noda-san. We have included an English version of this below. But we would like to put this in historical context.  Our goals have always been to:

• eliminate the unilateral policy changes of personnel policy
• add the word, age to the non-discrimination clause.
• Or to return to the 1964 Retirement with Extensions policy with the same interpretations and implementations as practiced by the Board/Admin at our point of hire.

In 2001, the FSCC put forward three recommendations for altering the retirement policy:

1. adding age to the non-discrimination clause, or
2. changing 59, 60 to 64, 65 in the 1964 retirement clause, or
3. to look at a possible gradual reduction of salary. 

These were all rejected by the Board/Admin, possibly without full discussion of the proposals.

After listening to the school's concerns and recognizing the mutual benefits of reaching a prompt and amicable resolution to this issue, the Union has agreed to put forward the following proposal:

Proposal

A.      The beginning year for this policy will be 2004-2005, previous years will be under the old policy of 1964-2001 (for salary and benefits) under which they were hired.

B.      The first year, salary will be 1 step down, the second year (05-06) an additional 1.5 steps down, third through 5th years (06-09) will be 2 steps down--reaching to step 10.5.  The retirement allocations will automatically decrease as the salary steps go down.

C.     Teachers who are below step 10.5 go up 1 step each year until step 10.5.

During the past several years we (Union) have discussed many options for dealing with the retirement issues --and feel each has just grounds upon which to form a proposal of settlement.  From these we have selected the proposal above to be formally presented..  We think you will agree that the Union members have already moved from what we consider ultimately the fairest and most equitable solution of having no age discrimination in reaching the above proposal.

We are awaiting your reply on this proposal.

Sincerely,

ASIJ Teachers' Union

Ron Dirkse -- President

Bill Jacobsson Vice President

Marguerite Arnote

Mid Squier

John Hohenthaner

Addendum:

Financial - remains an undocumented concern.  With record enrollments and massive building expansions taking place, financial concerns are NOT at a level of policy intervention concern needed to save ASIJ from financial default.  The Board/Admin has said they do not feel that there is any need to show us the financial statements of the school.  The Board representatives have said they see no need to demonstrate the school's lack of funds necessitating the need to change employment policy and/or contracts.  This is a legal necessity if policies are changed to the worker's detriment.

Rejuvenation - The appointed Board representative refused to define this word even after stating that rejuvenation was a reason for firing 60-year old teachers.  It seems to us the Board/Admin are using this term as another name for "turnover", rather than re-energizing or re-charging.  If that is the case, there again is NO just cause to release teachers since there has been the usual turnover of about 30 people this year (2003-2004) and possibly even more anticipated for next year.  What is a proper turnover rate remains an unanswered question--the Board/Admin representatives have been asked for this information in the danko meetings.  What is best for the school's educational policies, continuity, and valuable alumni contacts?  Certainly the school exists for the students but can the students be the only concern?  What about parents? Teachers? Staff? Administration?  Alumni?  What about all of us who help to make this the great institution it has become?

Evaluation - is totally in the hands of the administration, so if this is a problem --which we don't see--it is the administration's problem/fault, not the faculty's.

Other factors and concerns:

We have been told that retirement was, in the past, mandatory at 60--it was not.

We have been told that this was not a new interpretation of the policy--and then the Board President admitted it was.

In both the Spring of 2002 and with the AdHoc in Spring of 2003, poorly structured and faulty surveys were distributed to the faculty and faulty interpretations of the resulting responses were used to support and justify the Board/Administration's views and actions regarding retirement.

We have seen an Ad Hoc committee unilaterally set up by the Board while we were in the danko process.

We have seen a background history sheet, regarding the retirement issue, distributed by the Ad Hoc committee that had many factual errors.

To get some discussion on this issue we were forced to form a Union and then were not even allowed to hold discussions on the school property but had to go to the local shrine and temple for the Union/Board meetings.

We were told that there were people in the past who were not extended at age 60, but that turned out to be US--the Union members who are protesting the changes in the 1964 Retirement with Extensions policy.

In the arbitration meeting #4 of April 20, 2004 the administration finally admitted that no one has been fired solely on the basis of age 60, previous to all of those teachers fired in November 2001.

In the arbitration meeting #5 on May 17, 2004, the Board team left after less than an hour saying they could not discuss anything without it being in written form. They asked us to name the six administrators who we requested, under the assurance of confidentiality, to respond to the previous implementation and interpretation practiced under the 1964 Retirement with Extensions Policy.  We did share that the six are from only nine still living!  They included past Headmasters, HS principals, MS principal, ES principal and Directors of Business Affairs.  They also said there were some discrepancies in our listing of the non-extended teachers.  We are not aware of any errors on this point, and any possible errors certainly are minor.  These facts have been posted and presented for nearly two years and nothing has been said until this meeting by the Board's representatives.  Would this be another delay tactic?  We never claimed all our notes were perfect, but certainly we have shared all of our information.  Is this true from the Board's side, especially in this time of desiring to move forward in good faith?