The OP is absolutely right. Wages should be at 800 entry level. Thatâs what everyone should be asking and expecting. There is no need for a school to raise their charges to pay teachers that much. A school with a full schedule and classes with 10 or more kids each can easily afford to pay 1200-1500 and still the boss gets to drive their beamer around no problem. 800 is incredibly reasonable, and arguably you are still getting pretty seriously exploited, considering how much money the boss is making off of you.
We arenât Taiwanese, we are imported workers, weâve given up our homes, families, friends and culture to be here, so yeah, I would say we should expect to get paid better and treated better than we would if we stayed home. I would say itâs reasonable not to compare us to native people. But you canât anyway, because Taiwanese have a host of advantages from living here that drive their cost of living far below ours anyway. I also donât believe for one second that the average salary is 30,000 which everyone is constantly touting, as though the government actually has a clue.
The average salary is 30,000 a month, but look at rent in Taipei, itâs 20,000 for a complete shit one bedroom apartment. I canât explain how it is that Taiwanese families get by like that but my guess has always been that they either mostly have owned their homes for generations, are grandfathered in under old rates, OR maybe, just maybe, the average salary in Taiwan is closer to around 60,000 per month, because who has EVER worked for a job in Taiwan where the company reported over half of their workerâs actual wages? You have to admit, it just doesnât add up. If families of 4 were living in Taipei on 30,000, theyâd have all the kids and parents sleeping in the same bed and still one of them would starve by the end of the year. And average wages for english teachers in Taipei are still the same they are everywhere else, only 600NT. Frankly, I am shocked there is even one school that can find a teacher for 600nt in Taipei, I am constantly wondering how you guys even get by. You canât possibly be saving hardly anything.
It amazes me that there isnât a foreign teacherâs union. I saw a thread about it and was shocked at the animosity and hostility which was almost the only response from anyone. A guy suggests getting everyone salary raises, and fair working conditions where employers actually adhere to contracts, and everyone lines of up flame the hell out of him. Thatâs just insaneâŚ
A union seems so obvious, it blows my mind there is even a shred of resistance to it. And obviously thatâs all it takes, to keep everyone scraping by forever and getting exploited by greedy cram school bosses. Just like all it would take would be for everyone to agree to ask for a reasonable wage, and we would get it. But if you take a poll, raise your hand if you want to get 600 an hour, now raise your hand if you want 800, those same idiots would of course raise their hand for the 800, but they all start throwing rocks at the guy who wants to organize and actually do it, as though itâs some kind of offensive idea.
