Special Leave

From HyogoAJET

[edit] Types Of Special Leave

• Bereavement Leave
• Marital Leave
• Natural Disasters
• Pre/Post-natal Leave
• Sick Leave
• Commuter Transportation Failure

Special Leave covers all forms of leave that you are allowed to take without using your paid leave. The details will vary from contract to contract, but we have listed some things that are usually included. Each one may or may not be paid leave, and the allowed time is usually very specific. For example, marital leave might be 5 consecutive days of paid leave, whereas post-natal leave might be 6 weeks of unpaid leave. Neither Summer Leave or Study Leave are in this category, and are instead mentioned in the article Paid Leave. Also, even though we talk about it separately here, Sick Leave is usually treated as a kind of Special Leave.

In addition to the types listed above, your supervisor may give you leave at their discretion for things such as going to the immigration office. However, it is also their right to refuse this leave, and if they refuse you are required to take normal paid leave.

[edit] Sick Leave (病欠)

Many of your Japanese colleagues will not take sick leave when they are ill. They will in fact use their regular paid leave, mainly because most people don't use all of their nenkyu anyway, and because if a person uses a lot of sick leave it usually harms their chances at promotion.

We do have sick leave in our contracts, and we are entitled to it if we become ill, so please use it if you need to. Remember that some schools will ask you for doctor's notes, and all schools will require a doctors letter should you be away for a prolonged period of time. Check with your contracting organization about what they require to grant sick leave. Some contracting organizations will only give out sick leave if you are hospitalized, and some may also require the doctor to write a note saying that you had to rest that day and could not perform your duties. If they require you to get a doctor's note, get the note. If they only require a receipt from the hospital, then get that. One more reason why most Japanese people just use their nenkyu.

While in some countries people believe that the best thing for a cold is to rest at home with cayenne pepper soup, keep in mind that in Japan many people believe that if you are sick you must go to the hospital. In other words, if you aren't sick enough to go to the hospital, then you are healthy enough to go to work. Also, we had a case where an ALT was sick and called up her supervisor, who offered to take her to the hospital. He forgot to pick her up, so the next day she had a friend take her. Because she didn't go to the hospital until the next day, her BOE made her use nenkyu for the first day that she was sick. As unfair as it may be when you have a 39°temperature, in the end it's your responsibility.

In Japan, there is often not a limit to the number of sick days one can take. However, your contract probably has a provision that after a certain number of days, sick leave becomes unpaid leave. Also, you should not think that you have unlimited sick-leave. As a matter of fact, during Evaluations one thing that is often looked at is how much sick leave you used. Of course, if you truly need to stay home because you are ill, then you should not worry about how much leave you take. Just remember that sick leave is often a matter of trust. If you feel that your contracting organization is very strict about sick leave, it might be because your predecessor abused their trust. Don't do the same thing to your successor.

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