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District Court Supports Prefecture
On October 31, 2002, the District Court of Kumamoto rejected the claims made by two foreign teachers at the Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Dr. Cynthia Worthington and Ms. Sandra Mitchell. The lack of any criticism whatsoever of the highly questionable practices of the prefecture is particularly shocking. The court found nothing wrong, for example, with the University telling the Ministry of Education that the teachers were "fulltime" in order to gain certification of a new faculty but then telling the teachers themselves that they were only parttime and as such not entitled to job security. Nor did they see any conflict between advertising the job as "fulltime" and then forcing the successful applicants to accept inferior positions at the university in which they were to work "no more than 30 hours per week and no more than 20 days per month." Perhaps most amazingly, the court took the position that the Prefectural University of Kumamoto did not discriminate on the basis of nationality -- even though they only employed foreigners as "fulltime parttime faculty."
We could not accept this outcome and subsequently appealed to the higher court in Fukuoka. Unfortunatly, this appeal was lost and our movement ended. For information about our appeal click here.
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