Yeah, so that thread I posted yesterday about wanting advice to deal with co-workers? It's just become irrelevant.

We're all losing our jobs -- found out today that the board of ed. will be outsourcing our jobs to a private company come Spring. (6 foreign teachers are immediately affected and possibly 5 more).

Then, to add insult to injury, two of my co-workers found out TODAY that a new contract (which they weren't allowed to see until today) went into effect on Aug. 1 and cut their salary by $500 a month, unbeknownst to them, because an accounting error paid them their old salary. So now, the board of ed. wants the money back and will be docking their salaries by $1000 for the next two months.

No, wait... This gets even better! The timing is impeccable. One of my co-workers (and next door neighbour) just found out (a month ago) that his wife was pregnant with their first child, so she will be having to leave her job just at the time he'll be losing his, and they were really counting on that cash. Plus, he just bought a new motorbike to get to work since his old one is broken past the point of being worth to fix.

As for my wife and I, well we both work for the board of ed. so yeah, we're both losing our jobs. At least we're not pregnant (as far as I know)... But we have no savings because we're trying to put me through school (MBA)...

All of this is yet to become official, so that has bought us a little bit of time, so tomorrow, I'll be calling the union to try and get an organizer over here from Tokyo to see if we can organize a local chapter and start demanding collective bargaining. I'm not very optimistic though, for technical reasons I can't get into here.

Our other co-worker will be on the phone with the Labor Standards Board, as we don't think what the board of ed. is exactly legal (informing someone a month and a half after their pay has been cut that their pay is cut and that they need to pay the money back)...

<sigh>

All I can say is, for those of you who have faith: please pray for us. Right now we can sure use it.