Geos in trouble? Rumors continue!
Tagged Under : bankrupt, closing, eikaiwa, english schools, geos, Japan Related, nova
Just in my mail box from ETJ (English Teacher’s Of Japan).
There have been rumors that Geos is in trouble since last September when a Geos spokesman admitted that sales were down and that the Nova collapse had caused ‘distrust among the public about English language schools’. The EL Gazette now reports that Geos is strongly denying the rumors.
According to the report, Chad Lafferty, Geos Teaching Ltd’s human resources director, said ‘Opening and closing locations is a normal part of business… The global recession has certainly impacted the way we do business but it would be wrong to say that any closures of the company are directly related to the recession.’ He went on to say that ‘Geos hasn’t laid off a single employee due to business results or the recession. Furthermore, we have no plans to do so.’
Click here to see the EL Gazette article (you will need to register). The digital version of EL Gazette, a news magazine for English language teachers around the world, is published monthly and can be accessed free of charge.
When Japanichiban started out many moons ago as a job support and advice organisation before the internet was even getting off the ground, we had an ad in the old Tokyo Classifieds advertising our services. It was a phone in help line and I remember our first person to use the service was a young lady from Geos on the verge of suicide. That was close to 15 years ago now and Geos are still ticking.
Let’s Japan started out their site also from Geos experiences as an outlet for teachers to debunk the myths of teaching English in Japan, especially for Geos.
Nova fell as have countless other English schools but Geos just keep on ticking away.
This latest news? Could this really be the end?
From Wiki!
An article in The Japan Times noted the deplorable working conditions of GEOS staff. In 1999, the company was taken to court by fourteen of its managers over unpaid overtime. At the time of the case, the main plaintiff said that she was working a 72-hour week under constant unmanageable pressure to increase sales at her school. Even though the managers won their suit, costing GEOS 300 million yen in unpaid overtime, the media mostly overlooked the case. In the same article, managers noted high staff-turnover and long working hours. However, a spokeswoman for the company insisted that GEOS, and the language learning industry as a whole, provided women with rare opportunities to begin business careers.[6]
Recent economic woes have lead Geos to be late paying the Japanese staff in August and September 2009. It is further reported that foreign teachers working at the adult schools were not paid on time in October 2009. Geos is currently asking clients to pay as much as 5 months in advance for the following year’s lessons in a bid to raise the necessary funds to meet payroll obligations. This financial distress has led many Japanese staff members to resign.[7]
GEOS began closing some of its branches in Japan in 2007, with more than 10% of domestic branches shuttering their doors in under two years. At its height, GEOS maintained teacher recruitment centers in London, Melbourne, Toronto, and Vancouver. Melbourne closed in March 2004, London and Toronto in October 2006, and the Vancouver center closed in October 2008.
