- Home
- Organization of the JTU Headquarters
General Management Section (general management and finances)
| Kindergarten Unit | seeking to ensure the existence of public kindergartens, which are “centers for child development and child-rearing”, with a view to guaranteeing public early childhood education |
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| Nutrition Staff Unit | seeking to ensure children’s growth and the improvement of their diets through safe and well-balanced school lunch |
| Nursery Teachers Unit: | demanding the improvement of the standards concerning nursery teachers who work in infirmaries, including their placement at all schools and placement of several nursery teachers at large schools |
| Youth Unit | pulling together all the professions who work at school, with a view to developing peer groups at workplace |
| Commission on Union Secretaries | discussing and seeking for the improvement of the working conditions of those who are employed in relation to union activities |
| Commission on Ad-Hoc Teaching Staff | seeking to ensure that the teaching staff who are employed on an ad-hoc basis are not treated unfairly in terms of wages and holidays |
| Education for Children with Disabilities Unit | developing educational policies for children with disabilities by the staff working with those children |
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| Manual Workers Unit | seeking to improve the status and wages of skilled educational workers, care workers, farmer workers and other staff |
| Experiential Teachers Unit | seeking to improve the status and wages of the teaching staff who oversee laboratory education and experiential education at high school |
| Commission on School Libraries | seeking to improve the status and wages of the staff who work in school libraries |
Education and Culture Section (educational policies, education and culture, educational research and other policy issues)
| Female Unit | making demands for female teachers’ rights and developing policies for gender equality |
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| Secretary Workers Unit | seeking to improve the status, wages and working conditions of school secretary workers |
Living Section (living, legislation, wages, educational finances and politics)
- Regular General Assembly
- Central Committee
- Central Executive Committee
JTU Institute for Education and Culture (think tank of JTU)
Union activities on the basis of the people’s wishes
“If I was asked what has changed after I had become the chief of the Youth Section of JTU, I would answer that I’ve come to have a broader perspective. If I were one of the teaching staff in the field, certainly I would not have opportunities to meet the officials of the Ministry of Education or other people with various backgrounds, including those in the labor movement. Thanks to these opportunities, I have been able to absorb a diversity of ideas. At the same time, I have been able to take another look at the school as a workplace as well as those who are called teachers. More than that, I have been able to look at myself from another perspective through these filters.
“For example, I made desperate efforts to learn about the Fundamental Law on Education before I took the exam for recruitment. But, when I was involved in education practices with children in the field, I was not aware of each and every wording of the Law. When I started to work at the JTU Headquarters, I’ve come to recognize that the Fundamental Law on Education has played a major role in guaranteeing the future of children with different backgrounds. I also went to other labor unions to brief them about how JTU thinks about the Law and to ask for their cooperation in the struggle against wrongful amendments to the Law. Of course, some of them have opposite views from ours; they made harsh criticism against us or treated us coldly. By listening to their views, however, I learnt the importance of being involved in the practice of education, which should be ‘directly responsible to the whole people’. Concerning the issue of national expenditures for compulsory education, for example, attention should be paid not only to teachers but also to other professions working at school. I’ve come to think that I want to be involved in educational practices as well as the labor movement, valuing each and every wish of my peers, in terms of employment, wages, working conditions and so on. For that purpose, I want to keep my antennae high, thinking that I am part of the JTU movement, not leaving everything to the executive members. In other words, I could have another opportunity to think about what the union activities are and what is important in them. Movements can only be meaningful when they are undertaken by each and every union member, rather than by some few activists. No wonder about it, isn’t it?
“However, this natural thing is not happening in the workplace. While it is undoubtedly important for the union to improving working conditions and to prevent hectic schedules, I’m feeling the strong need to revitalize the functions of the chapters at each workplace, where we can accept and recognize each other’s actual working and living conditions, discuss them and create an atmosphere that allows the expression of complaints and concerns. Only through the existence of such chapters, we will be able to create movements by our own voices, different from those through top-down mobilization. And only when such groups of the teaching staff exist, we will be able to be involved in educational practices fit for each and every child with different background.
