***Mod’s note: this was split from [url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/raids-and-raids-and-raids-and-raids-post-your-stories/50400/1 thread.[/url] ***
I can’t believe that foreigners work in kindergartens for such little money. We should be demanding over 1000 an hour. We are the one’s risking getting kicked out of Taiwan.
You lack scarcity. If you can get 1000 now next month they’ll just replace you with someone else for 900. Then they’ll replace that person with someone else for 800 and keep pushing the hourly wage downwards. Eventually (next September) it will get down to where it is now when another wave of recent college grads show up. You can’t demand a higher salary unless you have: better credentials than the next person, connections or blackmail.
I’m sorry to let you know steelersman, but in this market you are a price taker, not a price setter. Why not think about starting up a union instead? 
Yes, maybe a union would be needed. My point was not about the current amount. The point is I wish foreigners would not be used by Taiwanese. Why should one work for 600NT when they run the threat of getting deported for working in a kindy?
The question could be posed another way, why does anybody want to work in a kindy and why just for 600nt/hr.
Yes, maybe a union would be needed. My point was not about the current amount. The point is I wish foreigners would not be used by Taiwanese. Why should one work for 600NT when they run the threat of getting deported for working in a kindy?[/quote]
Sorry, but I was taking the piss out of you on the union thing. There is a long (30+ page) thread with some wonderful advice for an individual who wanted to start an English teacher union. Search for it if you have some free time. I’ll give you the main reason why a union won’t ever work here; if you try and organize, they’ll just deport you and there is shit you can do about it.
Workers are exploited by management all the time, however it’s not exactly “exploitation” when you are making 2 times what the local teachers are making and 6 times minimum wage. I’m sure you can find a lot of manual labors brought over from other SE Asian countries who have, and are, being used and exploited.
Why should someone teach kindy for 600 NT given the risk? That’s the going market rate for kindy work. If you don’t want to work for that, or don’t want to work at a kindy, then don’t. If you can make enough money only working afternoons and evenings without the morning babysitting gig go for it. You don’t have to. Someone will want to work for 600 NT an hour to play with the kids and risk getting deported over it. If no one will, then the kindy’s will have to offer more in an hourly rate to attract teachers.
because you know it’s illegal and you still choose to do it. The amount of people that sign contracts and get threatened to be blacklisted if they don’t finish it WITHOUT knowing it’s illegal is minimal.
It’s like being upset for losing a limb while searching for landmines at NT600 an hour. NObody is holding a gun to your head.
Yes, maybe a union would be needed. My point was not about the current amount. The point is I wish foreigners would not be used by Taiwanese. Why should one work for 600NT when they run the threat of getting deported for working in a kindy?[/quote]
And to that I say you are vastly uninformed. Most Taiwanese college grads make half what we make for 2x the hours we have. I know Taiwanese working in business who get by on 30000 NTD per month. Accountants, too, and programmers, engineers, etc. Taiwanese English teachers actually make a lot of money (comparatively) but must work much more than we do.
You should be thankful our wage is twice what the natives are making, and complaining about it isn’t going to get their already negative attitudes toward English teachers any higher.
A union would be great but why would the government feel compelled to care about its non-voting, non-Chinese speaking extreme minority? It’s unfair we’re taxed so high but that’s just the price we pay for being foreign.
plus, can you start a union for something that’s illegal?
Yes, maybe a union would be needed. My point was not about the current amount. The point is I wish foreigners would not be used by Taiwanese. Why should one work for 600NT when they run the threat of getting deported for working in a kindy?[/quote]
And to that I say you are vastly uninformed. Most Taiwanese college grads make half what we make for 2x the hours we have. I know Taiwanese working in business who get by on 30000 NTD per month. Accountants, too, and programmers, engineers, etc. Taiwanese English teachers actually make a lot of money (comparatively) but must work much more than we do.
[/quote]
Please don’t buy into that rhetoric. While we do better on the surface, there is a lot you don’t add into the equation. as most foreign teachers here work for buxibans, they get the crappy Chinese New Year bonus, and that is if you are lucky. It isn’t a surprise (well, at least when the economy was ok) for a local to get 1 1/2, 2, or even 3 months salary as a bonus. What do buxibans give? 10,000NT? Also, locals can buy into a pension plan where employers basically pay you 6% more each month than your stated salary.
I am sure the deeper you dig financially, you will find even more bonuses (depends on industry), free trips (I know my in-laws pay for their employees to take a trip, last year was Thailand) and other benefits.
We do ok, but it isn’t anywhere as close to above and beyond local compensation as many want you to believe.
[quote=“timmyjames”]
Please don’t buy into that rhetoric. While we do better on the surface, there is a lot you don’t add into the equation. as most foreign teachers here work for buxibans, they get the crappy Chinese New Year bonus, and that is if you are lucky. It isn’t a surprise (well, at least when the economy was ok) for a local to get 1 1/2, 2, or even 3 months salary as a bonus. What do buxibans give? 10,000NT? Also, locals can buy into a pension plan where employers basically pay you 6% more each month than your stated salary.
I am sure the deeper you dig financially, you will find even more bonuses (depends on industry), free trips (I know my in-laws pay for their employees to take a trip, last year was Thailand) and other benefits.
We do ok, but it isn’t anywhere as close to above and beyond local compensation as many want you to believe.[/quote]
Let’s use a simple example. Say you make 60k pretax a month for 20 hours a week of work and there are an even 4 weeks in the month. That comes out to 750 NT an hour. Since you didn’t object to XinBiDe’s information on local teachers, we’ll use that. Local teachers make half of what your 60k pretax, but are required to work 40 hours a week. That means for them to make 30k pretax but working 160 hours a month (40 hours/week @ 4 weeks) they are making 187.5 NT per hour.
In one year of 12 months (to keep the math simple) you’ve made 720,000 NT. In one year they made 360,000 NT. Assuming they get 1, 1.5, 2, or 3 months salary as a bonus, they would net: 30k, 45k, 60k or 90k. That still brings them anywhere from 390k (pretax) at the lowest to 450k (pretax) at the highest. If they got an extra 6% in a pension fund, then they would get about 20k NT a year into their pension fund courtesy of their employer. Even with a 3 months bonus and the pension fund, you’d still be taking nearly 250k NT pretax more than them (720k vs 470k).
You can’t compare across industries because they have different pay scales and benefits packages. You need to compare within industries for it to be relevant. You should also compare with what kind of work is available for Westerners to do. Compare a teacher with a teacher, not a teacher with “some field” that gives even more bonuses for the Taiwanese workers. That’s disingenuous. If I were to compare what an English teacher makes with a Taiwanese CEO that wouldn’t give a very clear indication of the situation. You need to use the closest available substitutes to see what the differences in pay and hours are.
I think you’ll find that the local compensation is pretty abysmal lately and that average college grad would be happy to make 25k NT a month. At 160 hours of work a month that ocmes out to be 156.25 NT per hour pretax. You complain about only making 600 NT?
I totally agree with you, ibksig. Just because you are tall, blonde and can barely speak English, doesn’t mean the world owes you a living.
[quote=“lbksig”][quote=“timmyjames”]
Please don’t buy into that rhetoric. While we do better on the surface, there is a lot you don’t add into the equation. as most foreign teachers here work for buxibans, they get the crappy Chinese New Year bonus, and that is if you are lucky. It isn’t a surprise (well, at least when the economy was ok) for a local to get 1 1/2, 2, or even 3 months salary as a bonus. What do buxibans give? 10,000NT? Also, locals can buy into a pension plan where employers basically pay you 6% more each month than your stated salary.
I am sure the deeper you dig financially, you will find even more bonuses (depends on industry), free trips (I know my in-laws pay for their employees to take a trip, last year was Thailand) and other benefits.
We do ok, but it isn’t anywhere as close to above and beyond local compensation as many want you to believe.[/quote]
Let’s use a simple example. Say you make 60k pretax a month for 20 hours a week of work and there are an even 4 weeks in the month. That comes out to 750 NT an hour. Since you didn’t object to XinBiDe’s information on local teachers, we’ll use that. Local teachers make half of what your 60k pretax, but are required to work 40 hours a week. That means for them to make 30k pretax but working 160 hours a month (40 hours/week @ 4 weeks) they are making 187.5 NT per hour.
In one year of 12 months (to keep the math simple) you’ve made 720,000 NT. In one year they made 360,000 NT. Assuming they get 1, 1.5, 2, or 3 months salary as a bonus, they would net: 30k, 45k, 60k or 90k. That still brings them anywhere from 390k (pretax) at the lowest to 450k (pretax) at the highest. If they got an extra 6% in a pension fund, then they would get about 20k NT a year into their pension fund courtesy of their employer. Even with a 3 months bonus and the pension fund, you’d still be taking nearly 250k NT pretax more than them (720k vs 470k).
You can’t compare across industries because they have different pay scales and benefits packages. You need to compare within industries for it to be relevant. You should also compare with what kind of work is available for Westerners to do. Compare a teacher with a teacher, not a teacher with “some field” that gives even more bonuses for the Taiwanese workers. That’s disingenuous. If I were to compare what an English teacher makes with a Taiwanese CEO that wouldn’t give a very clear indication of the situation. You need to use the closest available substitutes to see what the differences in pay and hours are.
I think you’ll find that the local compensation is pretty abysmal lately and that average college grad would be happy to make 25k NT a month. At 160 hours of work a month that ocmes out to be 156.25 NT per hour pretax. You complain about only making 600 NT?[/quote]
Sorry to blow up your whole argument, but actualy Taiwanese teachers do not teach in buxibans. The teach in schools, and are well compensated. Also, comparing a local buxiban teacher to a foreign buxiban teacher is apples and oranges.
The simple fact is, buxibans have foreigners because that is what the parents want. Buxibans have locals to keep the operation expense down.
Also, most locals exist entirely in this economy, while most foreigners have to deal with exchange rates.
Do you know why kindy pay for foreigners averages 600NT/hour? It is the lowest possible pay the school can offer without driving all the foreigners out of the country.
Sure they do. There are other buxibans than just for English. Check out near Taipei Main and you can find a cram school (which is the same as a buxiban) for any subject you want. That aside, there are many, many Taiwanese teachers who teach in English buxibans. What do you think a Chinese co-teacher is? Here is a link to a Tealit ad in Taichung city that offers a Chinese co-teacher for assistance each class. So if you want to “blow my argument up” you’ll have to try a little harder than that. Taiwanese teachers teach all over the place: in schools, in buxibans, in universities, etc etc. They are compensated differently for the degrees they hold, experience they have, and a myriad of other factors. That said, the average college grad here still makes a lot less than the average Westerner teaching in a cram school. The average co-teacher makes half of what the foreign teacher does.
If comparing a local buxiban teacher to a foreign buxiban teacher is “apples to oranges”, then who do you compare them to? The closest substitute for a foreign buxiban teacher is a local buxiban teacher, whose primary difference is their birth place. If you can’t compare two people in the same office, then who would you compare foreign buxiban teachers with? A local news reporter? A local CEO? An expat who works for a multinational?
You brought up the CNY bonus thing. The Taiwanese get: a smaller hourly wage, work longer hours, and take home less pay month to month. If they are lucky they’ll get a fat hongbao around Feb. You haven’t contradicted any of those assertions yet.
Buxibans have foreigners because the parents want a white face. If that is all you bring to the table then you are replaceable with another white face that will work for cheaper. The owners don’t just hire locals to keep operating expenses down, they’ll also trade your ass for someone cheaper in a second to keep operating expenses down. If a teacher doesn’t have any experience, any training or certifications, then they aren’t bringing much to the table. Even if they have all of the previous items it isn’t a guarantee that they’ll be any good, but at least its a starting point for the negotiations.
What does that have to do with anything? Are you suggesting that you should be compensated for the exchange rate? Get paid more when the exchange rate is poor and less when the exchange rate is better? More to the point, what does that have to do with compensation for the work that you do?
[quote]
Do you know why kindy pay for foreigners averages 600NT/hour? It is the lowest possible pay the school can offer without driving all the foreigners out of the country.[/quote]
I would venture a guess that they pay the bare minimum because you aren’t doing much teaching for kindy kids. It’s more of a glorified babysitting job with the occasional high stress emergency when a kid hurts themselves. Perhaps its something else, like supply and demand. There are probably a lot of people who like consistent hours without having to travel to hell and high water who take those jobs and don’t mind making less per hour so they have a solid schedule.
Foreigners won’t leave the country if they got paid 595 NT an hour, not in this economy. 600 is not a magical number especially as a pretax amount. Someone who needs hours or an ARC would take that job. Looking at Tealit again for a moment and in the teachers section there are 4987 teachers as of 12:47 am. With more teachers expected to arrive in a few months, 595 an hour and a contract might be a lot better than being barely employed.
The point is that Taiwanese teachers are not working illegally. They are not risking getting deported.
[quote]And to that I say you are vastly uninformed. Most Taiwanese college grads make half what we make for 2x the hours we have. I know Taiwanese working in business who get by on 30000 NTD per month. Accountants, too, and programmers, engineers, etc. Taiwanese English teachers actually make a lot of money (comparatively) but must work much more than we do.
You should be thankful our wage is twice what the natives are making, and complaining about it isn’t going to get their already negative attitudes toward English teachers any higher.[/quote]
Of course we should be paid more. It is not because we are foreigners but because supply and demand dictates so. I am sure if there were boat loads of foreigners that would work for 40,000NT a month, Buxibans would pay that amount. Furthermore many recent college graduates would not come here for that. They have student loans to pay. I imagine if wages were depressed that much, many would not be able to work here.
Furthermore many jobs pay by the hour and one is often out up to three months of salary a year due to being out of working during Chinese New Year, July, and August.
There may be 4987 teachers but some of those postings are from 2003. You should only count the postings in the last month.
[quote=“lbksig”][quote=“timmyjames”]
Sorry to blow up your whole argument, but actualy Taiwanese teachers do not teach in buxibans. The teach in schools, and are well compensated. Also, comparing a local buxiban teacher to a foreign buxiban teacher is apples and oranges.
[/quote]
Sure they do. There are other buxibans than just for English. Check out near Taipei Main and you can find a cram school (which is the same as a buxiban) for any subject you want. That aside, there are many, many Taiwanese teachers who teach in English buxibans. What do you think a Chinese co-teacher is? Here is a link to a Tealit ad in Taichung city that offers a Chinese co-teacher for assistance each class. So if you want to “blow my argument up” you’ll have to try a little harder than that. Taiwanese teachers teach all over the place: in schools, in buxibans, in universities, etc etc. They are compensated differently for the degrees they hold, experience they have, and a myriad of other factors. That said, the average college grad here still makes a lot less than the average Westerner teaching in a cram school. The average co-teacher makes half of what the foreign teacher does.
If comparing a local buxiban teacher to a foreign buxiban teacher is “apples to oranges”, then who do you compare them to? The closest substitute for a foreign buxiban teacher is a local buxiban teacher, whose primary difference is their birth place. If you can’t compare two people in the same office, then who would you compare foreign buxiban teachers with? A local news reporter? A local CEO? An expat who works for a multinational?
You brought up the CNY bonus thing. The Taiwanese get: a smaller hourly wage, work longer hours, and take home less pay month to month. If they are lucky they’ll get a fat hongbao around Feb. You haven’t contradicted any of those assertions yet.
Buxibans have foreigners because the parents want a white face. If that is all you bring to the table then you are replaceable with another white face that will work for cheaper. The owners don’t just hire locals to keep operating expenses down, they’ll also trade your ass for someone cheaper in a second to keep operating expenses down. If a teacher doesn’t have any experience, any training or certifications, then they aren’t bringing much to the table. Even if they have all of the previous items it isn’t a guarantee that they’ll be any good, but at least its a starting point for the negotiations.
What does that have to do with anything? Are you suggesting that you should be compensated for the exchange rate? Get paid more when the exchange rate is poor and less when the exchange rate is better? More to the point, what does that have to do with compensation for the work that you do?
[quote]
Do you know why kindy pay for foreigners averages 600NT/hour? It is the lowest possible pay the school can offer without driving all the foreigners out of the country.[/quote]
I would venture a guess that they pay the bare minimum because you aren’t doing much teaching for kindy kids. It’s more of a glorified babysitting job with the occasional high stress emergency when a kid hurts themselves. Perhaps its something else, like supply and demand. There are probably a lot of people who like consistent hours without having to travel to hell and high water who take those jobs and don’t mind making less per hour so they have a solid schedule.
Foreigners won’t leave the country if they got paid 595 NT an hour, not in this economy. 600 is not a magical number especially as a pretax amount. Someone who needs hours or an ARC would take that job. Looking at Tealit again for a moment and in the teachers section there are 4987 teachers as of 12:47 am. With more teachers expected to arrive in a few months, 595 an hour and a contract might be a lot better than being barely employed.[/quote]
There are so many things wrong with your posts that it is basically impossible to sort through. Lets just say the entire economy of the buxiban market proves you wrong. Your facts are bad, as other posyers have pointed out, and you avoid facts, such as illegal work vs. legal work, when it hurts your opinion.
Reply if you want, but I won’t be replying back.
[quote=“steelersman”]
The point is that Taiwanese teachers are not working illegally. They are not risking getting deported.[/quote]
That’s a fair argument. They get paid less for not doing something illegal. There is a bit of logic which says that you shouldn’t do something that is illegal without understanding the risk of being deported. I agree the law is stupid and worse, seldom enforced but you are still breaking it and that is the risk. If you don’t want to break the law don’t teach kindy. You have a choice here, no one is forcing you to break the law.
[quote=“steelersman”]
There may be 4987 teachers but some of those postings are from 2003. You should only count the postings in the last month.[/quote]
Another fair argument. I’m surprised they actually kept postings from 2003. I would counter that any teacher postings for the last three to six months would be relevant, not just from March 2009. In March there are around 100 ads placed by teachers. In Feb 2009 there were about 100 ads placed too. In the last three months there are 300 new ads for teachers. I don’t have the time to double check so I acknowledge ahead of time that there will be duplicates and people who aren’t qualified to teach in there. I’ll also acknowledge that there are more people in big cities than in small rural towns. Still the point is there are a lot of teaches here in a contracting market.
[quote=“steelersman”]
Of course we should be paid more. It is not because we are foreigners but because supply and demand dictates so. I am sure if there were boat loads of foreigners that would work for 40,000NT a month, Buxibans would pay that amount. Furthermore many recent college graduates would not come here for that. They have student loans to pay. I imagine if wages were depressed that much, many would not be able to work here.
Furthermore many jobs pay by the hour and one is often out up to three months of salary a year due to being out of working during Chinese New Year, July, and August.[/quote]
I think you aren’t understanding how side of supply and demand works for you. You don’t get paid because you feel you deserve more. You get paid when you can convince your boss that you have something they need that requires more hourly pay and that they can’t find it cheaper elsewhere. The demand for kindy work is for a Westerner. Most buxibans aren’t requiring a lot in the way of qualifications to work with little kids.
The supply of Westerners here is high and getting higher with the global recession. There are boatloads of foreigners who are willing to work for 40k NT a month at a kindy job. They can then pick up an afternoon gig and make even more than the locals for half the number of hours. Many college grads will take that job because local unemployment is at such a high level. If the amount is too low people leave and then the wages go up. If wages are at a high level more people come and wages get depressed. If wages get depressed people leave and wages go back up. It’s a cycle.
As for the 3 months of not working, well why should you get paid for not working? A bonus is a bonus. If you don’t have PTO then why would your boss pay you a salary when you aren’t working? If you want to not have 0 income during CNY and the summer months, why not have your boss hold part of your salary back every month so that you have a consistent monthly pay? You get a little less during the other 9 months but then you won’t be scrounging for change in the summer months or during CNY. That or budget accordingly so you don’t go fucking broke.
[quote=“timmyjames”]
There are so many things wrong with your posts that it is basically impossible to sort through. Lets just say the entire economy of the buxiban market proves you wrong. Your facts are bad, as other posyers have pointed out, and you avoid facts, such as illegal work vs. legal work, when it hurts your opinion.
Reply if you want, but I won’t be replying back.[/quote]
I haven’t avoided anything and actually addressed your points specifically. You have so few things in your post, while being so wrong, that it’s basically impossible to sort through. Let’s just say that there are dozens of threads about the buxiban market which prove you wrong. As other posters have worked here for years have pointed out, qualifications aren’t compensated for by buxiban owners who are looking at their bottom line. You avoid addressing any facts and just make general hand motions in the air about how I post when it hurts your opinion.
Reply if you want, but try to actually post something that addressed what is wrong. I don’t expect you to reply back.
I think this debate is pretty clear-cut…
I don’t know how you could argue so greedily that we should earn even MORE than our local counterparts. We already make obscenely more than they do.
My girlfriend is Taiwanese and an English teacher and she makes maybe 450 an hour, and that’s about as much as she’ll probably ever make. If she could get 40 hours of jobs at various schools and various times (which she can’t) she’d be making a remarkable 72000 a month, which is fantastic for a local teacher… However, she will never get those hours realistically and will probably only get maybe 40000-50000 per month working at a couple different schools.
Meanwhile, I’ll be making the same doing almost half the work. We get about the same bonuses too, in this industry, as I understand it. I’ll also be working for just one school.