Work without pay!

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

I’m considering challenging my schools requests (read requirements) for extra work because, 1. its not in my contract and 2. I get paid by the hour with no paid sick or vacation days.

Its really number 2 that pisses me off. Ok, fine don’t pay me if I get sick or go on vacation but then don’t expect me to spend hours writing up your Christmas and Graduation time performances for nothing, nor to peruse, digest and put into practice the reams of teaching suggestions your head office slap together.

Simply saying no is not the best option. To much stress all round. And in any case I wanna be righteous about it and hit them with the unfairness of the situation. I want to prepare a case and discuss/negotiate.

To my mind there are two options: Option A: no sick and no vacation pay and no extra work outside of the classroom. And any novel ideas the school wish applied to the classroom they need to think through and make directly applicable to the teaching situation and if necessary taught to teachers via a paid workshop.

Option B: Pay me sick and vacation days and either a salary or a negotiated rate for extra work required such as the writing of the performances. (And people spend anywhere from 5-15 hours on these damn plays once re-writes and revision kick in). Not to mention extra hours practicing. Hours stolen from the rest of life, not merely unpaid hours.

I would call either of these options professional and fair and likely to breed good will and morale amongst the teaching staff. Those same staff might even go a few extra miles if they didn’t feel they were being asked to bend over quite so much. I personally like teaching and want to help the kids.

Any views based on experience how this might fly. A good way to approach the boss maybe or even an option I haven’t thought of.

I’m also curious what the situation is for Taiwanese. I know long hours on salary are completely the norm but what about those paid by the hour without sick or vacation pay. Are they expected to work extra without pay?

2

Here’s an idea. WAKE UP.

Here is your cake Dial. Now go ahead and eat it.

Dial, I don’t know what to say to you honey child. You really think that you can negotiate with them? Ha ha ha.

Option A: Pay me for the classwork only. No chance, you must be mental. You will need to get a job at Shane or Hess. Even then you will have to do a little bit of nasty old ‘unpaid’ planning. Bless.

Option B: Give me sick pay and holiday pay. What so you can start taking time off during the term? Ha ha ha. No chance. Why should you get it? No-one gets sick pay, dreamer.

Option C: Hills option… Get a new job where you can stomach the job description BEFORE you start work, OR realize that most teachers in the world do tons of unpaid planning and marking. If you can’t handle the ‘rigours’ of ESL then get another kind of job.

Oh wait, you CANT, not in Taiwan.

So, just enjoy the fact that you are in a profession that you are not trained formally to do, and that they are paying you to act like a teacher, so you can study chinese/ get laid/ get wasted/ get experienced. Whatever is your bag.

They use you like you use them. Don’t harp on.

3

Ah Tom, wise, old, down to earth one, uh.

First I don’t use them. I work for them. In any case, I use them, they use me, it still has to be fair and by mutual agreement. Otherwise I’m not using them they’re using me.
Two. I do have some training for my job, both in terms of experience and formal qualification.
Three. My first job in Taiwan I was paid for class room prep and I received sick and vacation pay.
Four. My second job here, I negotiated pay for the two days of training that everyone else was doing for nothing. I guess they never thought to ask.
Five. Some unpaid preparation is cool. No more than a couple of hours a week, though.
Six. Bet you I get what I want.

I suggest you get back in your gravel truck matey and find someone else to condescend to. Or maybe think of something intelligent and constructive to say rather than the tired old ‘this is Taiwan, get real’ attitude.

4

First off, you asked for views. Tom’s are spot on. Second, why are you even asking, since it appears you know so much more than we do in any case. Go ahead and do your thing.

5

Dude, this is a time waster.

I didn’t ask for ‘views’. I asked for good ways to approach the boss or maybe a good third option. I didn’t ask or expect to be told to 'wake up, to stop ‘harping on’, or be called, ‘honey chile’, and ‘a dreamer’. That’s exactly as I called it - condescending. Now you get all flouncy and tell me that I seem to be a know it all anyway.

Surely you guys have got better ways to spend a Saturday afternoon than dissing posters. I want a bit of community here not this crap.

You might like to review the ''Short" Rules, posted to the left of this message.

Peace.

6

Damn, that would be ‘Short’ Rules posted to the left of every ‘Post a reply’ screen.

7

Dial,
Before giving advice, it would be useful if we had answers to the following questions:

  1. How long have you been at the school?
  2. Are there other foreign teachers?
  3. How is your relationship with your boss?
  4. Would you mind being “let go”?
8

Sorry. My reading comprehension is a little rusty. :laughing:
And how am I dissing you? You pointed out your experience in these matters and I simply opined that with your experience you should go ahead and do your thing.
Or maybe I got that part wrong, too. I misunderstood the part about our views so badly, I’ve rather lost confidence in my comprehension abilities.

9

You must of missed the last rule, it states you are not allowed to dis a prolific poster. :stuck_out_tongue:

That also comes with being a prolific poster :smiley:

Maybe you could ask for time off in leiu. ie: you work an extra day and you can take a day without loosing pay.

10

Ok, so you don’t want to hear that you shouldn’t have taken a job if you didn’t like the conditions. You don’t want to hear that it sounds like you want your cake and it eat. You want suggestions, on your terms only.

  1. Get boss drunk and ask for raise.
  2. Show boss how they benefit from pandering to your whims.
  3. Get a group together and all go and demand sick pay. Power in numbers. Better yet, form a teachers union, and get sick pay for all.
  4. Don’t ask Forumosans, they can’t stop giving their opinions about things when all you want is advice.

BTW, the argument ‘its Saturday, haven’t you got anything better to do’ is kinda ironic, isn’t it?

11

[quote=“Dial”]I’m considering challenging my schools requests (read requirements) for extra work because, 1. its not in my contract and 2. I get paid by the hour with no paid sick or vacation days.

Its really number 2 that pisses me off. Ok, fine don’t pay me if I get sick or go on vacation but then don’t expect me to spend hours writing up your Christmas and Graduation time performances for nothing, nor to peruse, digest and put into practice the reams of teaching suggestions your head office slap together.

Simply saying no is not the best option. To much stress all round. And in any case I wanna be righteous about it and hit them with the unfairness of the situation. I want to prepare a case and discuss/negotiate.

To my mind there are two options: Option A: no sick and no vacation pay and no extra work outside of the classroom. And any novel ideas the school wish applied to the classroom they need to think through and make directly applicable to the teaching situation and if necessary taught to teachers via a paid workshop.

Option B: Pay me sick and vacation days and either a salary or a negotiated rate for extra work required such as the writing of the performances. (And people spend anywhere from 5-15 hours on these damn plays once re-writes and revision kick in). Not to mention extra hours practicing. Hours stolen from the rest of life, not merely unpaid hours.[/quote]
I would think an amended Option B would be fair. A negotiated rate for extra work seems reasonable to me. Talk it over with your boss when he/she’s got some time and seems reasonably relaxed. Don’t ask for an answer on the spot, but let him/her think it over. If you don’t get the desired result, ask the boss to suggest an alternative.

12

Having a bad day, Tom?

The dude said it’s not in his contract. He agreed to do a job, and then they changed the requirements of the job. What do you say to someone who does that?

Me, I say “Sorry, but I don’t have time to do that. It will interfere with either my paid work somewhere else or my free time.” And that’s all.

If THEY make a big deal of it, then point out politely that it’s not part of your job, and that if they want you to do extra work then they have to pay for it. They want your hours they pay for your hours, that’s what the contract says. And start looking quickly for another place to work, because they’re not going to let you to win and get away with it.

All the bitching about not getting sick pay or vacations was not simply someone complaining about his working conditions. It was someone complaining that, after agreeing to be paid only if he was working, he’s being asked to work without pay. I think the gist of his argument is that if people want him to do unpaid work they should occasionally pay him to do nothing. Sounds fair to me, if unlikely to happen in Taiwan.

13

You do have a culturally appropriate option:

Agree to do all the extra work when they ask, and then, just don’t do it.

14

[quote=“R. Daneel Olivaw”]You do have a culturally appropriate option:

Agree to do all the extra work when they ask, and then, just don’t do it.[/quote]
Of course. The Taiwan way. :laughing:

15

Hah hah hah. At Hess you have to mark all the homework on unpaid time, as well as lesson preparation and Sunday morning open houses and drilling kids on speeches and judging competitions and performing at banquets and so on ad nauseum …

16

In all seriousness, this is the technique I was taught by my Taiwanese business partner from some years back:

If an organization you work for request that you do something "extra’, of course you do not say ‘no’. You simply say, “I will do my best” (in Chinese: “jin liang, jin liang”) and then you fail to deliver the product or service on time. They will not ask again. Maximum two tries on their part.

Yes, this goes completely against the Western way of thinking. To Westerners, this is devious, insincere and deceitful. Apparently, to a considerable number of Taiwanese, this is a good way to proceed as no one loses face by being refused.

I would, however, advise lining up another job if this sort of request gets too unbearable. They might not fire you for failing to complete request X right away, but they might “choose not to renew your contract”.

The other route, of course, is the “filial child” route: “I promised my mother that I would do X that day / would never do Y, and I owe her everything, she sacrificed herself so that I could go to school / come to Taiwan / recover from that horrible illness. I’m sorry, but I cannot go against her wishes, she is everything to me.”

17

Sage words from the ironlady.

As a good friend of mine in Taiwan once taught me, “All hard work will get you is more work.”

Refusing your boss and complaining a lot will not rest well with him. Alaways approach the situation with politeness and act like it’s not your fault and you have no choice (ie the filail child act). I use the dedicated husband/father routine to get out of a lot of stuff at work. “No, I’m sorry but my wife and were really planning on going to Taiwan Storyland tomorrow. I don’t know if I can tell them we can’t go now.” It’s always followed by a retracting of the offer.

18

Almas John, to answer your questions, I’ve been in the job coming up for 8 months. There are a number of other foreign teachers, however, we meet only once a month - I think it’s the old divide and conquer at work. I get on well enough with my immediate boss. The big boss, I’ve never met.

Would I mind being let go. (See my response to Maoman) Well, my job is close to home, small classes, and the teaching system is very tight and well designed. And I get the challenge of teaching the kids to write. And the hours suit the rest of my life.

Sounds good, yes, but to give it some perspective I left my previous job - one I enjoyed, but with huge amounts of unpaid prep - because I wanted to give more time to Chinese and other pursuits. I was quite straight up about this and what it would mean for my availability when my current employer hired me.

I was not told I would be ‘asked’ to write performance plays. Definitely a sin of omission, given that I’d stressed my intentions very clearly. Nor, that there would be a major schedule change within three months. (worked out well in the end). I understand how it works here, I also know there is room in the system for individuals to ask for a better deal.

And sometimes if you don’t push back now and then they’ll just work you over harder. As the poster with the shoe noted, working harder will only get you more work. Very true and the reason I actually conceal the extra work I do for my class. Funny, but sort of sad too, uh.

Which brings me to the devious and ‘sage’ advice from Ironlady and twmc. So true. In practice I decline crazy notions like coming in on Sunday or Saturday mornings due to the fact that I have either other employment/Chinese class. The Taiwanese seem to see these as legitimate get-out-of-work passes. I’ve learned that simply saying, ‘no, I don’t want to’, doesn’t really cut it.

Maoman, your approach is closest to my own heart. ‘A negotiated rate for extra work seems reasonable to me’, - yes, my sentiments exactly. I’ll probably try and get a couple of other teachers on board also. The timing is important, you are right. When the boss is relaxed is good but not so relaxed she’s gonna be happy to wave you goodbye. I think a month out from the plays. The contract has been signed, most of the spare teachers schlepping around have got work. At that point my proposition will seem a lot easier than looking for a new teacher.

Sandman, a last word: sir, you’re as sharp as a tack. I bow to your keen eye. You might allow, though, that I was probably after some constructive ‘views’, yes ?

And Gravel G, good to see you’re beginning to mellow a little in your second post. I see some hints of constructive suggestions in there. Nice. I’d still go easy on the Whisby, coke, and binlang, tho.

19

Honestly, if Tomhill and Sandman feel that putting up with all that is de rigeur then I feel sorry for you. If that reflects your lives I really wonder how you’ve managed to tolearate it all these years.

I’ve been here many years and am asked to do little outside work without pay. Schools which have asked me to were either turned down or left without a teacher.

There are options Dial - being an indentured servant shouldn’t be one of them.

20

I’ve never heard of sick pay or vacation pay for non-salaried positions. You’re being paid by the hours you work.

Second, yes, it is terrible when they make you do tons of non-paid work (other than simple lesson preparation). In this case you will have to look for schools that don’t reuqire such extra unpaid work.