David's English Center

Legal Legal - Work
1

Hi Folks,

I’ve been in Taiwan just over a month now and I am still looking for work here. I am presently located in Taipei. I have a 90 landing visa starting from the 23rd of March 2010.

Yesterday, I was invited to an interview in the nearby city of Taoyuan to a school called David’s English Center. It’s part of a chain school with branches all over Taiwan, I understand. On the surface, it seemed like a good job as I would be teaching adults for which I have a lot of experience.

The first thing the woman, who interviewed me and who I presume is the manager of this local branch, said to me was that, by Taiwan law, the maximum number of hours a teacher can work at her school was 17 hours per week. I don’t know if she meant just her one school or all jobs combined. If she meant just her own school, isn’t that bullshit? I read some place the maximum number of hours a foreign teacher can work is something like 35 hours between all jobs?

I took an hour by train to reach this school. She offered no demo. Instead, she told me that I could come back again tomorrow morning and I could teach a 2 and a half hour class and get paid for it - however she had to make some phone calls. She annoyingly lacked specifics here. In hindsight, I think she was going to ring another teacher who would otherwise teach this morning 2 and a half hour class and ask him/her to forego his/her wages which, instead, are passed onto me. She told me she would ring me back later that evening to confirm. I think that’s dodgy. This sounds like a real mickey mouse set-up if you ask me. Surely, that’s illegal. I don’t have the ARC or work permit. I need a an Employer who will sponsor me for my ARC and work permit. I shouldn’t be working in a classroom in a, I presume, registered school, without these documents. So, I said no, despite the fact that she would pay me. She explained that, if I got this “demo” (and that’s how she represented it - a 2 and a half hour demo), I would get between 500 and 600 NTDs an hour depending on my experience. She was annoyingly short of specifics. She has my resumé!! She knows my level of experience as a teacher. Why couldn’t she tell me exactly how much I would make? Anyway, did I make a mistake refusing this work gig? Is it the case that, as is the case with Kindergartens, if I’m caught by the authorities I would be deported? Should I have done it?

The offered job was a pitiful joke, I have to say. She could only offer me 2 and a half hours per week. I understand for a school to sponsor a teacher for an ARC and work permit, you’d need to work at least 14 hours a week. She assured me that her school would sponsor an ARC and work permit for me but if the school was only offering me 2 and a half hours per week, I don’t see how that can be so.

2

You’re probably going to have to do a demo to land a teaching job. Yes it is illegal but just how it is here. You would be deported if caught teaching illegally at any school. You could take it until you find another job that offers an ARC and pick up extra hours elsewhere. Very few jobs available for teaching adults.

They tell the government you are working the required amount of hours.

3

And risk being deported if caught. I don’t think so.

Then they lie. I think I was right to give this job a pass.

4

[quote]And risk being deported if caught. I don’t think so.
[/quote]
I understand your concern, but if you’re not willing to do a demo and/or teach before you attain your ARC, you may not get a job at all.

Of course they lie, most schools do. At the very least they lie to the government about your hours and pay.

5

[quote=“whitetiger”][quote]And risk being deported if caught. I don’t think so.
[/quote]
I understand your concern, but if you’re not willing to do a demo and/or teach before you attain your ARC, you may not get a job at all. [/quote]

I was willing to do a demo. I travelled for an hour from Taipei to Taoyuan city to attend this interview. She didn’t offer that I do a demo that evening, at the time of our interview. She offered that I could do a demo the next morning. This was subject to confirmation and she told me she would ring me back later that evening if I was interested in doing it. The demo would last 2 and a half hours and I would be paid for it. That’s illegal. The fact that I would get paid for that is illegal.

Also, my understanding is that a demo is about 15 to 20 minutes in duration. At least that has been my experience when I was asked to do a demo at an interview for a cram school for elementary students I was at recently.

Bear in mind, this is a training center. They have plenty of students in the evenings. Our interview was after 6pm in the evening. I saw some students whilst I was there.

Of course they lie, most schools do.[/quote]

How do you know?

6

Demos, paid or un-paid, are not legal, but they are also standard practice. IMO, it sounds like the woman who “interviewed” you was just trying to line up a sub for a teacher who may be out.

I’d give David’s a pass anyway. I taught one adult class at a David’s in Koahsiung once and they were teaching adults the same kids songs, and using the same kids books, as any other bushiban. Of course, that was years ago. Anyway, surely you can find something else.

But you may have to do a demo. Yes, it shoud be short.

Good luck.

7

How can an unpaid demo for 20 minutes or so be illegal? How can a school know if the teacher candidate is a good teacher or not if he/she doesn’t do a demo? Chasing up references? Maybe the teacher hasn’t got any.

That’s what it sounded like to me too.

8

It sounds like the woman is lying to you and can’t be trused. My advice is to get a job somewhere else.

9

[quote=“paulcarr”]How can an unpaid demo for 20 minutes or so be illegal? How can a school know if the teacher candidate is a good teacher or not if he/she doesn’t do a demo?[/quote]Teaching children in a school in classified as work, and is illegal without the correct paperwork.
You can however give a demo class to other teachers pretending to be students.

10

[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”][quote=“paulcarr”]How can an unpaid demo for 20 minutes or so be illegal? How can a school know if the teacher candidate is a good teacher or not if he/she doesn’t do a demo?[/quote]Teaching children in a school in classified as work, and is illegal without the correct paperwork.
You can however give a demo class to other teachers pretending to be students.[/quote]

It’s good to know, I suppose.

Funnily enough, two weeks ago, I went to an interview to be a teacher in a cram school for elementary students. I was invited to do a demo for the kids there and then. In fact, I was forewarned that there would be an demo by the job agent beforehand but I wasn’t informed as to whether I would be actually teaching real students or doing a mock class demo.

None the wiser as to the law, I did the demo that I was invited by the school to do. So, if the Taiwan police or those folks from the National Immigration Agency or whoever’s in charge were to burst in whilst I was giving that short demo class, I would be marched off to the airport and ingloriously deported (perhaps given some time to collect my belongings beforehand). Meanwhile, the school that granted me the demo isn’t given so much as a slap on the wrist.

I also notice that on online job boards, Taiwan schools brazenly advertise jobs which include teaching kids under the age of 6 years old. As I understand it, it is illegal for foreigners to teach in kindergartens in Taiwan. How about cram schools for kindergartens? They’re called ancinbans, right? It’s illegal for foreigners to teach there too?