I’m on a 15 month contract with a major chain in Kaohsiung. They’ve been open a long time with 7 locations.
We have health insurance, work 30 hours per week, but no labor insurance is offered to the teachers. If I’m sick and can’t work, I don’t get paid.
There is a coworker wanting to have a child, but she is looking for another school to move to now that she has APRC so she can have the benefits of maternity leave that comes with having labor insurance.
Is it normal to not have labor insurance? My previous buxiban in Taoyuan offered it, and every other school here in Kaohsiung offers it as well.
I just don’t know what the laws are around this and I’m worried about asking about it after having a teacher who’s been with the company since 1991 says he doesn’t care either way.
I’m looking to stay in Taiwan for the long term and I love this location and my students but without the option of a pension, it’s becoming scary.
If the company has more than 5 employees then all employees should have labor insurance. If it’s under 5 employees then it’s a little different, but as long as 1 employee has it then everyone should.
There’s 7 schools with my school having at least 15 people working in it. Only myself and my newest coworker being the ones who aren’t Taiwanese/APRC holders/married to a Taiwanese National.
Is there anything I can do about this? Apparently it’s been brought up in the past to the owner but he says we’re more than compensated otherwise.
I make $600/hour plus $30/hour bonus at the end of my contract. It would be nice to have labor insurance or accident insurance if something happened at work. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid.
He’s bullshitting you and he has probably done this with every foreign teacher he has ever had. This is a fairly common practice. I worked in a school that didn’t want to offer health insurance. They told me I didn’t need it and that if I got sick, they’d just give me some money to see a doctor. I had the advantage of them really needing me because it was September and the semester had just started so I played dumb and told them not to worry about it and I’d just go to the insurance office myself. Of course they freaked out and told me not to go. A week later I had my brand new health insurance card.
You could tell the boss that you have to have by law and if he doesn’t give it to you, you’ll go to the labor department and file a complaint but then you risk losing your job. They’ll come up with some bullshit excuse to fire you if they have to. Remember that you’re just a foreigner. You mean nothing to them.
You could also go to the labor department and explain the situation to them. Perhaps they could suggest some other approach.
if you manage to understand chinese, input the address of your school and check their chinese name. if the name includes “公司”, it is a company and labor insurance is mandatory, if 5 or more people are working.
I would say the chances are very high that at least one person has labor insurance.
You can try calling the labor insurance and filing a complaint, but the last time I called there no one spoke English. I’m pretty sure you can file an anonymous complaint too.
You can ask a lawyer to look into it and handle everything for you as well. This could get expensive though and your boss will hate you.
You can also just talk to your boss and tell him. I tired this option at my last school 4 years ago and it didn’t work. The boss played dumb said foreigners don’t get that stuff and the LSA doesn’t apply to us. So, I got a lawyer and proved him wrong.
I believe you can also use this as grounds to quit and get a severance pay, but it’s been awhile since I looked at that part of the LSA.
What you choose to do, depends on how bad you want to continue working there.
$600h is low with today’s inflation but it seems from job ads I see that that seems to be the going rip off rate cram schools are offering.
Costs going up, same crappy hourly rates. Meanwhile the parents are getting billed a whole lot more.
Multiple long term teachers have recently left because they tried to work out getting labor insurance into their re-sign contracts, citing they could go to another school in the city making $800/hour plus labor insurance, and the owner basically said to go there then.
I’m new, relatively speaking. Only 7 months, but it’s much more stable and less stressful than my last job. I really want to stay here. So going to the MOL knowing cram schools don’t have to cover us with Labor Insurance is a scary thought.
If your friends with any you can ask them if they have it.
I took the easy way and just settled without going to court or mediation. Pretty sure his lawyer realized if we went to court it would cost him more than I was asking. Another coworker went to court and won the case. I’m not sure how much they got though.
Pretty much to sum it up, read the LSA. It applies to both full time and part time employees. And these are the things my lawyer told me.
If you renew your contact, then there is a good chance you can be considered a non fix term contract or whatever the proper term is for that.
You should also be entitled to sick days, holiday pay, and annual leave, though if you are part time you have to do some math to figure out how much you get.
And the biggest thing, all work should be paid, including lesson planning and grading. So if you are clocked in you should be getting paid regardless if you are teaching or not.
