The hours worked is the school’s contract with the CLA, and the teacher. If a buxiban were to promise 20 hours, but only deliver 10, do you think the teacher is liable? Of course not. At least here the buxiban is being up front about it. I think many teachers would love to have a legal ARC, at one address, with a bare minimum of hours. I know several who do, and then fill up their schedule with privates. That is common practice, and I’ve got no problem with it. I think teachers should educate themselves to the risks involved, if any. I don’t think it’s our place to prohibit discussion of private students, or limit discussion of privates to teachers who qualify to teach privates without legal repercussions. That’s a can of worms that’s not worth opeing up…
It is a tough call… No-one wants to sent unknowlegdeable newbies to dodgy/ unsuitable jobs, but there is little way to determine which jobs are indeed dodgy/ unsuitable for some before they can be posted. Could there be a place where people with job ads to post send them [color=brown]before[/color] they get put on the site. A kind of screening process. Maybe ask for clarification from ad posters over vague wording before they get posted out to the general public. I.E. some kind of moderating system? (May create a lot of work…)
On the other hand, can’t you have 2 jobs now ? Maybe this could be legal as the second job or something ? I have no idea about these things, I only know what McLean says.
Education is probably the best solution. A big fecking sticky with the rules so people don’t get caught up in some nastyness.
That would appear to be the most accurate characterization.
Yes, you can have two jobs, but both employers must guarantee 14 hours paid work per week. Maoman originally caught my eye when he endorsed the idea that guanxi and fudging are completely acceptable methods of obtaining resident status. I disagree and don’t believe someone of his esteemed status should be supporting obviously illegal methods. Someone can and will get deported if they try this system, in any number of ways, least of which is getting caught out during tax time. As I said, do things legally and you’ll have no problems. I haven’t and I am going on my 5th year. If an employer tells you it’s ok, he’ll take care of it, I’d take that as a big alarm. Remember that we are 100% disposable in the teacher market.
YMMV
[quote]Maoman originally caught my eye when he endorsed the idea that guanxi and fudging are completely acceptable methods of obtaining resident status. I disagree and don’t believe someone of his esteemed status should be supporting obviously illegal methods.[/quote]Either it’s common practice or not, at the end of the day it’s illegal and to let Dewey advertise as such is bad business and it reflects poorly on Forumosa so I tend to agree with you but then again, where do you draw the line? In all fairness, privates are also illegal and there are many teachers posting about that as well. If teachers can do it, why can’t Dewey do it?
This said, if a teacher spams, he gets floundered, warned and eventually banned. So should Dewey. There are rules and procedures in place to prevent spam. Has Dewey been warned? Why isn’t he banned yet? Any posters would be banned or at least suspended swiftly for spamming this much so I wonder why it appears that the rules are not evenly applied in this case.
Why have a conversation as to what is legal or not and what should be fudged or not. Regardless of content, spam is not permitted and that’s that.
bobepine
Yes, the ads are sexist too:
Yes yes… I know it’s traditional like service charges and foot binding…
I don’t know, are they posting the same jobs repeatedly?
Are they all different jobs?
Wouldn’t we like to have many different jobs advertised from which to select the best one?
Does it matter that a lot of these jobs are coming from the same company?
Doesn’t it mean that they’re doing well if so many schools trust them to find teachers?
I notice that there are rules about over posting, but still, some posters that have been around less than a year have more posts than I do. Are they spamming us?
Cripes, I am spamming in the job forum too, I posted twice this week. 
That’s it! I’m proposing a ban on you Bassman…Wait…I don’t have a green hat yet. I guess you’re in luck.
Twice in a week and 12 times in one day doesn’t compare IMO. One post updated daily with their contacts as agents would be fine. Maybe we should rename the forum to “The Dewey Forum”… 
bobepine
[quote=“bobepine”]That’s it! I’m proposing a ban on you Bassman…Wait…I don’t have a green hat yet. I guess you’re in luck.
Twice in a week and 12 times in one day doesn’t compare IMO. One post updated daily with their contacts as agents would be fine. Maybe we should rename the forum to “The Dewey Forum”…
bobepine[/quote]
That’s a great idea though, not the Dewey Forum bit.
Perhaps they should collect all their ads and put them into ONE daily update of all available jobs. Yes, that would be good. Place the agents name under each job.
Dewey, if you’re out there, this would get a lot of people off your case.
Correct. When an employer cannot do so, the burden and risk to the (assumed ignorant) teacher is so high that the best course of action is to be upfront and say “run away run away”.
I agree with you here. It’s extremely disappointing. One of the main points of Forumosa’s popularity is the fact that information posted here is of very high quality vis-a-vis all the other TW related sites. There’s been some bad information posted in this thread.
When Forumosa fails to uphold this standard because of “wink” “wink” or other unkosher like attitudes, then it’s like what’s the point of it all anyways?
If you as a teacher ever got caught in a fix and tried to get yourself out of a tough situation, your doing things on the up and up will almost get you out of any bad situation. If you can’t make that argument because you were part of the game so to speak, it’s really hard to extract yourself out of the mess. And certainly my office would be extremely limited in how to “fix” the situation for a client who’s got “unclean hands”. My office has had to turn down cases because it didn’t pass the “smell” test. This thread doesn’t pass the “smell” test.
One thing that hasn’t been posted is what recourse does a teacher have against schools and buxiban owners that take advantage of them? Do teachers have recourse and be able to bring suit or other regulatory action against them? YOU BETCHA. Do people want to see this information? Does it even matter?
[quote=“Grubber Kick”]If an employer tells you it’s ok, he’ll take care of it, I’d take that as a big alarm. Remember that we are 100% disposable in the teacher market.
YMMV[/quote]
English teachers, this is good advice to remember.
Bottom line is, abide by the laws of Taiwan, be educated and knowledgeable and you’ll be in good hands (most of the time). We should not be counseling people to play the game with less than a full deck of cards; it’s hard enough as is. But that’s what many people in this thread are doing here. These people ought to know better really.
Thanks YC. Hopefully others agree.
You either have 14 hours minimum a week, and 47,200Nt+ per month income, or you are illegal, period, unless you possess an JRFC or APRC.
Not much else to discuss really.
When I recently applied for my Teacher’s ARC, they demanded and received from me a teaching schedule. Once armed with that information, it’s easy enough for the CLA/FAP (Yes, they do cooperate) to pop into your school to do a check. If you have a teacher with an ARC, and only 10 teaching hours per week, both the school and the foreign teacher in question are busted, full stop.
The rules of the site are transparent enough that I believe this falls into the category of “Promoting illegal activities” and thus Non-Qualified schools (unlicensed, too few hours, kindergarten etc…) should not be allowed to post their ads here.
If one potential poster/lurker runs afoul of the law due to a fraudulant ad placed on our website, then we’ve done that member of the foreign community a great disservice, the very type of person we claim to help and inform.
[quote=“MJB”]You either have 14 hours minimum a week, and 47,200Nt+ per month income, or you are illegal, period, unless you possess an JRFC or APRC.
Not much else to discuss really.
When I recently applied for my Teacher’s ARC, they demanded and received from me a teaching schedule. Once armed with that information, it’s easy enough for the CLA/FAP (Yes, they do cooperate) to pop into your school to do a check. If you have a teacher with an ARC, and only 10 teaching hours per week, both the school and the foreign teacher in question are busted, full stop.
The rules of the site are transparent enough that I believe this falls into the category of “Promoting illegal activities” and thus Non-Qualified schools (unlicensed, too few hours, kindergarten etc…) should not be allowed to post their ads here.
If one potential poster/lurker runs afoul of the law due to a fraudulant ad placed on our website, then we’ve done that member of the foreign community a great disservice, the very type of person we claim to help and inform.[/quote]
I agree that we should inform people as much as much as possible. I think that people that advertise jobs with ARCs for impossibly few hours should explain how they can do that. I’m still not sure that the teacher is breaking a law if he/she accepts a job where the hours are below the minimum necessary for an ARC. Wouldn’t that be an issue between the school and the CLA? I mean, it happens all the time that a school gets a legal teacher and then doesn’t manage to keep their end of the bargain in terms of the hours offered. Is the teacher liable in such cases? If I work at Gram, Hess or whatever and they offer me 14 hours and then it drops to 13, I’d still have a valid ARC, right? Assuming that my hours are at the address stated, where’s the risk to me?
As far as what constitutes a legal job opportunity, that’s sometimes hard to discern. I legally employ a part-time native speaker at my buxiban at less than 14 hours a week. Could I not post an ad for the same kind of teacher to replace her when she leaves? Of course I could. Many foreign teachers could not take that job legally, but many could. And what about kindergarten teachers? Legally, I have grounds to believe that I’m entitled to work at a kindergarten. If I had to I would, and I would have no qualms about being a “test case” if it were necessary. It’s not going to be this website’s business to screen jobs for applicants. Educate, yes. And a disclaimer seems to me to be a good thing - look for one shortly - later tonight, if I can get my ass out of the office in time.
The issue is if you would also include that you could get the successful applicant a work permit, knowing full well that you’d only be able to do so by lying, and therefore putting the employee at risk. Companies like Gram do have that system you were talking about, however I believe that the teacher will ‘owe’ those hours back to the company at some point in the future, or they will be deducted from future wage packets. This kind of system is different to the ‘fudging’ you were refering to earlier. ‘Fudging,’ would involve lying about actual hours worked, whereas Gram/Shane etc are going to get those hours out of you at some point, so they are shuffling numbers. Not sure if that is illegal/ legal, but I think it is different to ‘creative fudging’ whereby someone is employed to teach ten hours per week, but the taxes etc are put through at 14 hours per week.
Out of ignorance I allowed myself to be ‘fudged’ on the taxes for about ten months. I have no idea what I allowed to go on in my name at that time. I just trusted friendly smiling “Uncle (insert name)” to do it all for me. Result… still no tax back some 18 months later. And a visa run to Bangkok when something else ‘happened.’ ‘Buyer beware.’ may not cut the mustard in this instance.
[quote=“MJB”]You either have 14 hours minimum a week, and 47,200Nt+ per month income, or you are illegal, period, unless you possess an JRFC or APRC.[/quote]For the first job, you certainly need 14 hours minimum. But in the case of multiple work permits, I don’t know whether that’s the case for each permit. This post suggests not:
[forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … 285#284285](Multiple schools on ARC?
As for the minimum wage, isn’t that for white collar workers? Anyway, even if you do have to prove that for the first job, it seems highly unlikely that you’d have to do that for subsequent jobs. One person with multiple work permits confirmed to me that there wasn’t a minimum wage requirement, at least for his 2nd and 3rd permit.
Also, I’m not sure how any either of these possible restrictions apply or are waived in the case of the 5-year “good citizen” open work permit, which I presume is still available.
[How to apply for 5 year "good resident" work permits?
At least in theory the minimum hour/wage restriction should be lifted for these permits, as they are supposed to be available for any kind of work, not just the normal kinds available to foreigners. In this respect the 5-year permit is supposed to be like the APRC and and the JFRV. (The difference is that you have to apply separately for each job, so it’s not a general work permit but rather a right to get a work permit for any job.)