I was legally employed at a buxiban, had been there more than 5 years, and then the boss fired me (and told me they plan to fire the other legally employed teacher there too) and parceled out my hours to three foreign students whom she is paying significantly less than I was getting. I am not happy about this and am in the process of taking the boss to court.
These students did not have work permits, nor did they have a BA degree, and one was from a non-English speaking country and was hired to teach English.
Despite reporting these students and the buxiban to the relevant authorities (Labor, Education, MOFA) the people doing the inspections have not done their jobs and have refused to apply the rules/laws.
Firstly, they visited and discovered the students did not have work permits (even though they had been working there almost a year in one case.) So they administered no punishment and gave the boss a number of weeks to register them.
The boss has entered the students’ qualifications on the system and falsely stated that they have BA degrees. An inspector visited the school but did not ask to see copies of the students’ qualifications to check, instead they accepted the boss’s assurance that they are suitably qualified, even though I supplied the evidence that they are on undergraduate programs in Taiwan.
These students are on big scholarships from MOFA, ones that include tuition, dorms, AND enough to live on. MOFA says they are working legally if they have a work permit. This is simply not true, as the law states, with no exemptions, buxiban teachers need a BA degree and can only teach the official language of the country their passport is from.
Has anyone else had any experience trying to deal with a similar situation? My next stop is to forward all the reporting/correspondence to the Mayor of Taipei City, while when we get to civil court I will have these students called as witnesses, cite the laws they have broken, and have to pray that a judge might not just turn a blind eye, too.