Contracts

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

What’s the deal?

Let’s say you’re hired at, I don’t know, 70,000 NT/month. Are you guaranteed that salary? What if your teaching hours are cut?

Do you get vacation? 5 working days? 10 working days? This excludes holidays. And do you even get national holidays?

What constitues a teaching hour? 50 minutes?

If your employer can’t fill your teaching hours during your regular shift (if you do have a schedule written in your contract), do you have to make up for the time outside the schedule and not get paid overtime for that?

Do you get bonuses like a month severence pay at the end of your contract?

Do you get free flights to Taiwan and back to your home country?

Basically, are you still getting screwed over there?

2

Like a lot of things in life contracts are negotiable. Having said that you need something to negotiate with and just being a foreigner doesn’t really cut it these days.

So if the things that you have listed above are important to you but are not included in your contract then negotiate before you sign the contract to have them included. If you are worth it then I doubt that many schools would not be willing to talk turkey. If you have nothing to offer then a schools refusal may be a good indication that you are not their preferred candidate. :wink:

3

Yep. Every time a candidate starts asking the “what’s in it for me” questions, I respond with “what do you have for me” questions. If I like what he/she has I’ll negotiate. Teachers who don’t feel a need to prove themselves can go work at a sticky-ball school.

4

It seems though that the standard of what the teaching industry has to offer is quite low. From what I see, most of the time no vacation is offered, no severence pay, no free plane tickets, no free rent, no mention of national holidays, overtime doesn’t seem to be an important thing to define or cover in job offers, etc.

To me, it just looks like there’s a lot of room for employers to exploit teachers. I’ve heard of many a case where a teacher is hired for so many hours and then the institution’s enrollment goes down, the teacher’s hours decrease and then they are paid hourly, and are committed for a year under such conditions.

And the salaries? Oh boy. I’m just going by what I see on job boards, but that should be a good indication. They’re low. Really low. On top of that, there’s no extra benefit. I see silly bonuses you can get for attendence, writing reports, etc. Those seem to be added on to a ridiculously low salary and there’s nb way to determine if a teacher can receive said bonuses if one accomplishes everything to receive them. It’s not foolproof. It’s all lies and leaves much in doubt.

In Taiwan, you are screwed before you get there and can easily get screwed after you get there. Offers don’t seem to mention some pertinent things that employers should automatically be mentioning.

5

Anyone with experience teaching in South Korea should know it is the same there.

6

Like this:

What’s the schedule other than the oh so tempting split shift? 20 students? 3 years old? Kindy should pay more, not less. What’s the vacation? Free housing and free lunches? Big deal.

How many hours? What are we talking about here? Too damn vague.

And this:

60,000! Wow! Treat me right. A new teacher fresh off the boat doesn’t deserve such a low salary. What are the incentives? Working 40 hours a week? Working Saturdays with no OT? Sharing an apartment with two other people you have never met? Teaching 18 students? What are the teaching hours? After four months, you can accumulate only one vacation day every two months? Oh boy! Four vacation days a year, teaching 6 days/week with probably no time off for national holidays and no overtime pay for those days. Good stuff! No severence?

Meanwhile, the owner is raking in a ton and the teacher is a slave.

Other offers on this board are either really vague and/or part-time. I’ve, of course, seen other boards and it all seems to be the same except for special cases like international schools or big chains. Such organizations that provide more details about vacations, national holidays, etc. generally don’t have paid vacation or pay for national holidays or sick days. And their guaranteed hours are low with no bonuses and tiny raises half-way through contracts if they decide to give you one. If you are getting a lot of hours, the pay is still pretty low (big chains) and you’re still working Saturdays no matter what. You have to pay for your own housing and plane ticket (big chains and international schools) and taxes in Taiwan are too high for a foreign worker. International schools may pay you 8 or 900 an hour, but that’s nothing to write home about either. That’s what it should be anyway. Especially if you’ve got 15 - 25 students in all your classes.

Offering low salaries, bad benefits, treating your teacher like a slave with no vacation and making them work Saturdays, even for newbies, is no way to improve the teacher’s performance. It just creates resentment. Is it really an employer’s market? The better you offer to treat employees, the better that teacher’s production will be. At least in the long run. If a teacher is an asshole, they will always be an asshole. No matter what you pay them.

Are you really going to attract qualified individuals with low salary offers? I don’t think so. You get what you pay for. If owners do hire someone at a shitty pay with no benefits and then expect them to prove themselves with stupid slave tactics, it can only lead to hell unless said teacher is really naive. Then you’ve got some poor jerk of a slave who, deep down, truly hates your guts.

Of course things are negotiable, but, if a prospective teacher is really worth it, he or she is going to skip over the jobs that look like shit in the first place. Why bother wasting your time trying to negotiate your salary to 20,000 more NT/month and to get vacation days and national holidays paid for, free rent, Saturdays off when it just looks like too much of a mountain to climb for something that isn’t worth your bother in the first place. Or just too much time spent negotiating something and only getting part way to where you want to go. You know? Scroll, scroll, scroll. Nope. Next.

7

Anyone with experience teaching in South Korea should know it is the same there.[/quote]

Not even close to the same. Newbie teacher’s here get 70 - 80,000 NT/month. No less than that. Job offers provide more details and follow more of a standard here: free housing, one month bonus pay at the end of contract, free return plane ticket overtime rate, defined schedules, Saturdays is an abnomally (and if you’re working them, you get OT), payment into pension which your boss matches and then, if you’re Canadian or American, you get both contributions back upon leaving the country, etc.

And taxes are much lower. Only about 2%. All year.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not in denial. Your boss will try to screw you over here. Maybe he’ll deduct 3 - 5% taxes when he’s only pocketing it anyway. They’ll avoid paying pension or maybe medical. There are many cases of late or non-payments or 11-month firings to avoid paying severence or your last month worked. I was screwed at my first teaching job here, but I only taught there for less than a month and I hadn’t been sent on my visa run which meant I was illegal. Couldn’t do anything. People aren’t angels here. You really have to know your rights and sometimes get lucky on who you work for. You should know what your rights are and be careful about some things in your contract like your schedule, overtime, etc. There are so many jobs here that the more research you do, you should be able to come up with something good. Other employers, like mine, have to be trained. Other employers may try to rip you off big time, but I hardly think that’s the norm. You have to be well-informed. It can be a headache, but eventually things stat to fall in place.

At least here, you’re getting more. If you’re getting screwed somehow, you just go to the labor board, call the pension office, call the tax office, etc.

There’s a big difference between 50,000 NT and 100,000 NT. A realy big difference. That’s not even counting overtime, 2 weeks vacation, all national holidays off. For a newbie. I’m not a newbie.

8

The school I’m demoing at tomorrow starts at 65k and has regular raises. But, it’s a 9-5 job. For me that happens to be good, since I get to see my girl in the evenings, but as an hourly rate it is of course awful. Still, after a couple of years it’s more like 80k.

Also, they give 4 weeks paid vacation per year (20 days, I guess), various bonuses including a return ticket to pretty much anywhere in the world once a year, and a stable, professional and honest environment.

I have reasons to stay in Taiwan that aren’t about my salary or benefits. And this job is about the best I can find. There is basically no technical work here worth doing salary wise – except on expat packages which entail horrific hours and working environment, and no long term prospects.

9

I don’t know what job you’re talking about, J99188, but the one you’re quoting seems pretty bad. Something a newbie would sign up for from overseas. A more experienced teacher (like moi) might learn with time to maximize his hourly rate by working 2 or more part time jobs, plus teaching more specialized private lessons. I work less than 20 hours a week mostly (unless I get extra private work) and I pull in pretty good coin, especially since I live cheap. Sometimes I earn a little money writing at home in front of the TV. I basically don’t want to work any more than that, and employers don’t f#ck with me because I don’t let them. I consider myself a contractor and it works well that way. At a buxiban, I’m a part timer that asks for higher pay, does a pretty good job, shows up early,and doesn’t cause too many problems. I don’t do unpaid christmas shows or holiday events unless I want to, I am responsible for filling my spot if I take a vacation, and I am reliable as hell. I would never sign up at one of those schools where you are the only teacher for 600 students and you are stuck there all day for salary money and one boss thinks he owns you. That sucks.I learned.

I don’t get plane tickets or contract completion bonuses. Why should I? I’ve never even heard of anyone actually getting one, even though they are sometimes offered. At one of my gigs they say that they will pay me 10,000 when I complete the contract, but I won’t hold my breath. One gig decided to hire an old teacher back and gave me severance pay once. I was flabbergasted!

Maybe South Korea is a better place for a newbie to start out. I would think that the Jett program in Japan would be cool as well. Better than showing up at CKS with 600 bucks in your pocket and not a clue, but hey.

So what exactly is your point? That Korea is better than Taiwan? For working? Ok.

10

I think you are making an awful lot of blanket statements…

I am salaried (in the high $60’s), have most of the national holidays off, with pay. if i work that day, i get to bank it as a vacation day.

my salary is guaranteed. I have been at my current job for about 14 months and have never taught more than 70 hours in a month. most of the time I teach about 60/month. i put in a fair amount of office hours, but i use them to shore up my work and come up with new stuff.

i get a weeks paid vacation every year, get regular bonuses from the director, have absolutely NO pressure…haven’t had anyone monitor my teaching in about a year…don’t have to get approval for any of my lesson plans, activities, etc…complete autonomy in the classroom.

I simply disagree with your statements about the low salaries. I don’t think making about NT$1000/hour at a job that I really enjoy a bad deal.

most classes I teach are two-hours with a 15 minute break. I’m not expected to do extra-curricular school activities.

I have a few students that I tutor on the side. they provide me with a nice income boost.

i subscribe to the “don’t shit where you eat” theory…don’t like the idea of my employer having control of my living conditions…this the main reason I chose taiwan over korea. i need a little more separation between my work and private life.

11

Taiwan still pays high if you make comparisons to China and/or Thailand. I suggest the OP look at contracts on offer on a China or Thailand board then compare both Taiwan and Korea. As far as money goes both Korea and Taiwan come out on top but, believe it or not, there are people who are willing to teach for the money offered in China etc. for various other reasons.

At on school I never really minded Saturday work in Taiwan but then I only taught two hours on Mondays. It all balanced out in the end. j99l88e77, have you seriously been considering back to Taiwan? Even though the bottom line in your posts seem to be mostly about money, your research seems to suggest that you have been.

Personally I don’t think the job quoted looks too bad. I’ve seen and experienced far worse newbie deals.
As for salaries going down when enrolments drop that really depends on the school. I’ve known teachers doing 9 teaching hours a week earning $50,000 a month.

This could apply to anywhere in the world:

12

You don’t see my point? There are exceptions, but it’s not often seen. There’s just no industry standard. You have to luck out or really dig to find what’s good. In many cases, you have to supplement your salary by working kindy and/or privates. That’s annoying. Your schedule gets screwed up and you’re having to teach every age and on top of that you have these privates who cancel too much. Nothing jumps out at you when you’re job searching. The lowest offers are really low. Way too low.

If you want to just go to a country for the experience, I guess that’s another thing. I’m just talking about offers and contracts that are obviously inadequate.

13

For me, not working at the same school all day every day keeps it interesting, maximizes my hourly rate, gives me freedom to supplement my income with privates (who pay in advance and don’t cancel, ever), and gives me opportunities to learn new methods and new angles for teaching. I expect to move into more private classes in the future and maximize my time/money ratio. I still have lots of free time, no school owns me or is any position to make unreasonable requests of me, and if I don’t like it, I can get out of most of my work without much repercussion.

What’s annoying for me is working at large schools that have you working the same hours every day, the same students for too many hours each day, too many report cards and communication books, too many pointless extra curricular functions, too many employee politics, too many times contract disputes for not getting paid for this or that, too much unpaid prep time, etc. All of this for some salaried position where you end up getting paid 3-400 bucks an hour if the month has too many work days in it and you get sick of teaching and the kids get on your nerves.

By saying that, I’m painting a picture that is true in some schools. For some people, that kind of job seems very stable and secure, and it’s a good deal for 70+ grand a month, a place to live, some company perks and maybe even a paid holiday or two. There are lots of jobs like that. Hell, If I really wanted to make some money, I’d live in a shared accom, eat noodles, get an evening job as well, and some privates. Maybe in some town down south. I’d pull in 120,000 a month, and spend 10. There are people who do that and you can bet they don’t spend that much time on F.com.:wink:

If I don’t have a good Monday morning, then It’s OK because I am doing something else by that afternoon. if little Johnny is acting up, I don’t have to deal with him all day. I’m not there long enough to get annoyed and lose my cool or something like that.

I just like having my freedom and choices. I make this happen by pretending that I am a contractor providing a service for money. I make English things happen for x dollars an hour and I do everything I say I will do from the start. I even like what I do most of the time. So do my students, of all ages and interests. It’s taken me 3 years to get on this path with working here. I like it better than ever.

That’s just me, and maybe others like me. I make good money, I don’t work too much (I used to work 80 hours a week back in the day) and I feel as if I am working for myself, which is exactly where I want to be. I work for my students as well because that’s kind of what a teacher does.

I guess it’s a “to each his own” kind of scenario. I think Taiwan is a good deal, but I’m biased. I’d like to hear more about Korea and how comfortable it is, how hard you have to work for that money and other comparisons.

I’ve noticed that the wages haven’t gone up in 3 years, so I take it upon myself to ask for more. I think all teachers should. It’s called cost of living and inflation.

14

I like canuckyuktuk’s posts. I do much the same thing as him.

I don’t quite see the point of the OP. The guy isn’t here, doesn’t say he’s coming here, he just seems intent on convincing people that life is better in Korea. And this under the heading of contracts.

Dude, all the stuff you mentioned will be specific to the contract you sign. There is no ‘standard’ deal. Flights, bonuses, etc are dependant on your relationship with your employer, their business model, and the value you bring to the business.

Whether or not the contract is obeyed is a dfferent thing, and the two should not be confused. If the contract says you get X, and you don’t get X, then that doesn’t make the contract unfair. It makes the boss a bastard, and/or the business a failure, and is something you can take steps to address.

Either way, it seems a bit weird to say that someone ‘should’ be offered something automatically. Their worth is determined by the market, which is different from the market elsewhere.

I have no idea what it is that you want people to advise you on or learn from you in this thread. It seems to be just “look at me, you’re a bunch of loosers” posted by someone trying to validate himself.

15

and further to tmwc’s point… j99l88e77 seems to pop up every few months saying the same stuff. I have worked in Korea and like many before me, its not something I wish to repeat.

Money isn’t everything.

16

It just seems to me that everything’s all over the place and lacking when you see job ads for Taiwan. I’m not saying that working in Korean is better than working in Taiwan. There are too many other factors at work when comparing the two. I know for a fact that the cost of living is much lower in Taiwan. That comes into play. It just seems to me that these jobs you see advertized really leave a lot to be desired.

17

I guess I can agree with you up to a point, J99. A lot of the jobs advertised do leave a lot to be desired. It’s really hard to tell from the ads. I know from experience what a good school acts like and what a good program works like. This kind of thing goes into play. I don’t work at chain schools or schools that have silly rules and regulations and fines. I am definitely taking a break from Christmas plays and graduations for a while. I guess if you’re here for a while you can get hired through word of mouth from schools that want what you offer. That’s where I am today and quite happy doing it. In the future I see myself being even more flexable and finding many more reliable, motivated private students. I really like it like that.

I have one job that isn’t going so well. I only have to work at it for a few more months before i can make a clean break. Got it through some online service that I put my name on 6 months ago. It’s not a money or hours problem, but a disorganized school problem. No improvements in sight. A short term contract that I wrote myself and got them to agree to, in principle. I provide quality English services, they provide students and monthly pay. Very straight forward and simple, and as the budget works out, they are inadvertantly paying for my next holiday anyway.

18

I guess I can agree with you up to a point, J99. A lot of the jobs advertised do leave a lot to be desired. It’s really hard to tell from the ads. I know from experience what a good school acts like and what a good program works like. This kind of thing goes into play. I don’t work at chain schools or schools that have silly rules and regulations and fines. I am definitely taking a break from Christmas plays and graduations for a while. I guess if you’re here for a while you can get hired through word of mouth from schools that want what you offer. That’s where I am today and quite happy doing it. In the future I see myself being even more flexable and finding many more reliable, motivated private students. I really like it like that.

I have one job that isn’t going so well. I only have to work at it for a few more months before i can make a clean break. Got it through some online service that I put my name on 6 months ago. It’s not a money or hours problem, but a disorganized school problem. No improvements in sight. A short term contract that I wrote myself and got them to agree to, in principle. I provide quality English services, they provide students and monthly pay. Very straight forward and simple, and as the budget works out, they are inadvertantly paying for my next holiday anyway.

19

[quote=“j99l88e77”]You don’t see my point? There are exceptions, but it’s not often seen. There’s just no industry standard. You have to luck out or really dig to find what’s good. In many cases, you have to supplement your salary by working kindy and/or privates. That’s annoying. Your schedule gets screwed up and you’re having to teach every age and on top of that you have these privates who cancel too much. Nothing jumps out at you when you’re job searching. The lowest offers are really low. Way too low.

If you want to just go to a country for the experience, I guess that’s another thing. I’m just talking about offers and contracts that are obviously inadequate.[/quote]

J99, you usually take the lowest end of the scale and hold it up as typical of Taiwan jobs. Most people know the best jobs in Taiwan are the ones that pay hourly; it’s best to avoid salary jobs. But even if we want to compare salary jobs (which typically suit noobs and are usually lower paying), consider that the average Taiwanese offer is calculating salary on between 20 to 25 teaching hours per week, or 80 hours to a max of 100 hours per month. Korean offers generally calculate their salaries based on 30 contact hours per week or 120 hours per month. That accounts for a big part of the difference.

Yes, the lowest offers are low. That’s not surprising; it’s definition of why they are the lowest offers and why they have to advertise to get staff.

Taiwan differs from Korea in a few signifigant ways:

The use of the internet and recruiters to get jobs is not as common place

Jobs more often pay hourly than by salary and, indeed, the better employers mostly pay this way

Taiwanese offers do not often include accomodations. Key money deposits are not required in Taiwan and rents are usually reasonable. Housing usually isn’t necessary and, anyway, it’s better to have your housing independent of your employer.

There is more of a hidden job market in Taiwan, open mainly to those who are in Taiwan, network and locate the jobs themselves.

The jobs you are holding up as examples are on the lowest end of the scale and aren’t representative of what many are making.

20

I’m not saying these low-end jobs are typical of Taiwan. I’m just pointing out that they’re even being offered. Yes, a lot are only for 20-25 hours. But is that good? Who really wants to take a part-time job? Especially from you sponsor? It’s your only “for-sure” money. We all know how it works there. Employers that are your sponsor, privates, and part-time jobs can fire you for a good reason, a bad reason, or for no reason at all. At the last minute. Not too stable. So, you’re working all the time with this possibility.

It would be really nice to see all of the noob jobs starting at 70,000 with some decent benefits. I guess the hours are just not there though in most cases, and, if they are, your working like a mofo.