Fair Deal in Taitung?

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

My girlfriend and I have just been hired by a recently opened Cram school in Taitung. The situation is unique because one of the partners is an old friend of mine. My girlfriend has some previous experience teaching english, while I have none, and neither of us are TEFL certified.

They are offering us 400ntd/hour, minimum, our first 3 months, but are only able to provide 5 hours a week each this first month, and 9 hours next month (july). We’re obviously in a bit of a wait and see situation, and they are continually emphasizing that we must promote ourselves in order to find new students.

So far the expenses for health checks and the ARC have been shared between us, and we’ve been staying at one of the schools with no charge.

Like I said, the situation is a bit complicated, and we’re really just looking for opinions and/or advice from anyone who is in a similar situation, or who has been here long enough to tell us if this is a fair deal?

We really just have no comparison for if we should feel lucky for what we have, or if we’re getting taken advantage of.

Lastly, they have no problem with us searching for work at other schools if we’re not satisfied at the end of the first three months, so any advice regarding the search for alternative work would be appreciated.

All replies will be received gratefully,
thank you
G and A :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

2

[quote=“gbt203”]My girlfriend and I have just been hired by a recently opened Cram school in Taidong. The situation is unique because one of the partners is an old friend of mine. My girlfriend has some previous experience teaching english, while I have none, and neither of us are TEFL certified.

They are offering us 400ntd/hour, minimum, our first 3 months, but are only able to provide 5 hours a week each this first month, and 9 hours next month (july). We’re obviously in a bit of a wait and see situation, and they are continually emphasizing that we must promote ourselves in order to find new students.

So far the expenses for health checks and the ARC have been shared between us, and we’ve been staying at one of the schools with no charge.

Like I said, the situation is a bit complicated, and we’re really just looking for opinions and/or advice from anyone who is in a similar situation, or who has been here long enough to tell us if this is a fair deal?

We really just have no comparison for if we should feel lucky for what we have, or if we’re getting taken advantage of.

Lastly, they have no problem with us searching for work at other schools if we’re not satisfied at the end of the first three months, so any advice regarding the search for alternative work would be appreciated.

All replies will be received gratefully,
thank you
G and A :slight_smile: :slight_smile:[/quote]

400 per hours is sub-standard even for noobs, or at least it used to be. If you guys are doing a lot to promote yourselves, you could talk to your friends/bosses about cutting you in in some way–with a new student sighn up bonus, or student retention bonus, or something. It could be worth it, as an investment, to get in at the bottom if you’re going to get anyting out of the growth. Also, if you stay past three months, ask to be reimbursed for your half of arc and health test costs, as these are usually paid for by the school.

On the otherhand, if your friends/bosses are just using you to teach these short hours until things really get going, or won’t work with you to find some way to sweeten the deal, then I don’t think it’s worth it from a purely financial stand point. Yes, you’re getting free lodging at the moment, but that can’t continue once the school gets more students. With a little help from local friend, you could find a cheap appartment.

Just my 2NT bassed on what I know.

3

Just make sure you are legal as Taidong FAP has a reputation for busting illegal foreigners.

4

Thanks for the advice. I think some sort of bonus would be a great idea and a little fairer given the extra hours we’re putting into promoting the school.

We’ve also been told that after this 3 month starting period where we’re being paid 400NTD, come October we’ll be paid 80NTD per student per hour. So we could potentially be earning much more than that, we’re just not too optimistic about getting the numbers in the classroom at the moment.

Have you heard of other schools, or teachers operating on this type of pay? Any recommendations on how much to ask for per student, or per student retained?

Thanks again

5

[quote=“gbt203”]… 400ntd/hour, minimum, our first 3 months, but are only able to provide 5 hours a week each this first month, and 9 hours next month (july).

Converting to USD, that is about US$60 a week or US$240 a month in June, and US$430 after that. It can be cheap to live in Taidong or anywhere in Taiwan, but I’m just wondering how anyone live on that?

6

That’s pretty much the point, it’s impossible… luckily it’s my girlfriend and I, so combining resources helps the cause, but most likely we’ll be searching out some other work.

We are the first foreigners they are hiring, so everything is new. They are opening the classes specifically for us, and are creating the positions rather than filling old ones. For these reasons they were upfront with how few hours they were going to be giving us when they hired us. So we can’t really complain, mostly, we’re just trying to find out average pay for teachers, and if our situation is at all normal (with regard to actively seeking new students/pay per student etc.).

I also have some savings that I was prepared to dip into, need be, these first couple of months.

7

Don’t know the business well, but Taidong is small. So networking and “promoting yourselves” may be key and that is why they emphasize it. Get to know people, be the nice friendly safe foreigner, look for other opportunities. With the two of you, could turn out to be a great adventure or opportunity.

Chinese tourists more and more passing through there, as are Japanese, so maybe consider for some alternative opportunity there for some additional income or experience.

Or party and have fun, as some of the others do.

8

You CAN legally have two workplaces on your ARC; consider asking them to consolidate your five hours into one or two days so that you can find employment elsewhere until your hours pick up. You need to survive, after all, and they should understand this, especially if they are your friends. By law, they need to be paying you NT$18000/month each(I think that’s the number), and even if they were upfront with you re. your hours, if this is a legal gig, you will be taxed based on at least that number.

Good luck; I hope everything works out well for you.

9

Be very wary. There’s a high chance something illegal is going on, and as someone points out, the tax people will expect a minimum amount of tax because there’s a minimum salary that foreigners must be paid in order to get a work permit.

They seem to be asking you to shoulder their financial burdens while promoting their new school. Do you get a cut if things become successful, too? Sounds like a very difficult way to get going, unless things are really really tight in Taidong? You should be able to get a newb gig for 550-600, with more hours, surely?

It’s also crap that you paid for your own health checks, ARC, etc. It does happen, but it’s not usually the mark of anywhere you’d actually want to work.

Good luck.

10

Be very insistent about the ARC. The very first school I worked at in Taiwan was also a recently opened cram school in a podunk village on the east coast of Taiwan. Since they hadn’t had their license for 6 months, they weren’t able to legally apply for an ARC, but they strung me along for several months nonetheless, sending me on two visa runs. To this day, I think they were incompetent and not malicious and I would have loved to have worked there for a while if they could have actually provided an ARC like they promised. Also, since I was in the middle of nowhere, quitting and looking for another job was a huge pain in the ass.

I’m not saying that you won’t get your ARC, but I’d take any promises with a gigantic grain of salt, in particular promises of enough hours from a brand-new school in the middle of the fastest-shrinking county in Taiwan during the most terrible recession in modern history.

11

This is all excellent information, and we appreciate it tremendously.

[quote=“tango42”]
Chinese tourists more and more passing through there, as are Japanese, so maybe consider for some alternative opportunity there for some additional income or experience.quote]
Any specific advice regarding this? I actually used to work in the states as a tour guide for small group adventure tours, but haven’t really considered the options here due to the language barriers. Do you know of many foreigners engaging in this type of work?

We’ve been hesitant to question the situation thus far, because we’ve considered ourselves lucky to get work,with (practically) no experience whatsoever, and were kind of waiting to get the ARC before being more vocal about our concerns.

I think the promotion is important, and the advice regarding trying to get some sort of commision/bonus for signed/retained students could be the key. Because the school is starting out, and being cautious, a bonus could provide us with the necessary motivation to ignore the crap hourly rate and sign up some students.

It’s also looking like we’re definately going to be seeking alternative employment, we’ve been hearing both positives and negatives about public school jobs, so we’ll spend some time researching this possibility.

Regarding the ARC, we’re heading to Hualien today, so it should be done then.

Does the tax get taken out of the paycheck, or do we need to file end of the year style, at which point earnings/amount taken out will be assessed? We are newbies.

12

I don’t live in Taidong, but I visit there often. The local expats and other who have tried to make a go of it in Taidong all say that the work situation there is very difficult. Taidong is a lovely place but it is also one of Taiwan’s poorest. Unemployment is high and the population is decreasing.

I think that if you can actually get the ARC and really want to live in Taidong, this may be reasonable. But you will have to be realistic about finding and retaining students. This might be very difficult in Taidong, which is why the owners want to outsource this to you. Still,I think if you can manage to get by for a year or so in Taidong, you will probably find a way to make it work.

You should really try to talk to some resident Taidong foreigners. It’s very different from other places in Taiwan in that it is very poor but many foreigners want to live there.

13

It depends on your bosses. I think that by law, your boss is required to take 20% for the first six months of your residency in any given year, and 6% for any months after the first six. If you’re here for more than 183 days, your tax will be calculated at 6% (if your yearly income is under a million or something like that) and you will recieve a refund.

Some employers like to deduct tax and then not report it to the government; be careful that they are witholding enough and that it’s being reported. Also, do you guys have ARCs? If not, think about finding a legitimate gig, fast. Otherwise, nothing you say will be credible, as you’re working illegally.