Contract Questions

Legal Legal - Work
1

I have a couple of questions re. my contract. Any assistance would be appreciated.

  1. My contract includes accomodation. This turned out to be a dirty room, with a mattress on the floor, in the middle of the school. The owners would not give me a key to the front door. If I wanted to stay out after 10pm at night I had to make special arrangements to get back in. I have since moved and am paying for my own accomdation. The owners of the school simply feel that I was too “fussy”, and do not feel that they have broken the contract. Do I have any recourse?

  2. I get paid monthtly for 85 teaching hours and 20 office hours. I also get paid for holidays. There is what I do not understand. In December I did not work Christmas Day. Normally I would have worked five hours. Athough I am supposed to be paid for the holiday, the five hours I normally worked were not counted in my monthy hours. This meant that the five hours overtime that I worked counted into the 85 hours. This meant I received no overtime pay. This does not seem right to me, but again the owner is adamant that she has calculated my pay correctly.

Thanks in advance for any help.

2

You are getting ‘screwed’. There is little you can do, unless you want to start a lengthy court battle which can cost you a lot of time and money. Next time select your school with care, don’t sign a contract from abroad and get everything in writing before you sign a contract (including the structure for holiday pay etc)

3

Hi…thanks for your response. I realize I am being screwed. I did pick this school with care, and I felt that the contract I signed was fairly well written. Unfortunately it appears it was not.

4

Perhaps you can nicely suggest to the company that there is a site called ORIENTED which attracts a rather decent audience of have-been or would-be English teachers and that if they don’t help you to resolve what appears to be reasonable concerns, that you will feel compelled to post the name of their school here on this board to warn others of what to expect.

You sound like a conscientious person. I wouldn’t expect to have ALL of your concerns addressed, but if they appreciate your work at all, hopefully they will at least meet you halfway. Good luck.