Korean Job Discussion Forums

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Part 1.

Introducing FREED draft Charter:

Teachers,

It has become very evident that an alternate teachers' organization is needed in order for teachers, especially those from abroad on contract in Korea, to organize and support each other. A collaboration began to establish FREED Busan, the First Response for English Educators, and the result so far is FREED in Busan and Gyeongnam-do. The purpose is to keep focused on the issues of teachers from abroad and build and maintain a service especially to address such issues because discrimination and other abuses against foreign teachers continue. It intends to be a first response system for newcomers especially. It will not be afraid to discuss the situation of foreign teachers.

What is proposed in this initial phase is a loose regional support network to act as a first response in assisting migrant teachers, connected electronically and holding casual meetings where and when possible. That is, it is largely a support network carrying information and friendship of particular concern to teachers, and particularly teachers on work visas and contracts. Aspects of developing this support network farther are being researched.

Below is the draft of the founding charter of FREED Busan-Gyeongnam. Please consider being a part of FREED Busan-Gyeongnam, or creating a branch in your region. Please submit feedback about the concept of FREED Busan and the draft Charter.

Disregard the statement made by Greg Dolezal as President of ATEK. His statement about the establishment of FREED and the people involved are erroneous as it is based on hearsay and guesses. ATEK had no business speaking for FREED. There has been no collaboration and will not be collaboration with ATEK about FREED. For further clarification, national ATEK leaders (through [email protected]) stole my email account and Facebook group page, which is criminal, and complaints are being made to authorities.

Yours most truly,

Barbara Waldern
Founding Chair

DRAFT 2- Founding Charter of FREED Busan-Gyeongnam

Purpose

The First Response for English Educators (FREED) Busan-Gyeongnam focuses on the struggle of teachers for their rights and better living and working conditions, including the improvement of English education standards, and with a special focus on the concerns of of migrant teachers recently arrived to Korea (1 month to 3 years). It is an affiliate of TEA-KOR .(See TEA-KOR Facebook and Unionbook.org pages.) Such teachers are citizens of foreign lands that come on particular employment visas and particular employment contracts to work and reside in Korea. It is an association of teachers there on the front lines of serving foreign teachers (mainly but not exclusively) in Korea.

Concept of leadership and process

Leaders, however designated with specific titles, are understood to be facilitators and coordinators carrying out work decided by the body according to the founding statement. Leadership groups strive develop a democratic and consensus-building framework so that decisions are made collectively and in cooperation with members. Leadership groups may be regular coordinating groups and committees, and specific and temporary tasks forces where and when necessary.

Work

-finds, organizes, maintains and makes accessible to teachers particular information useful in addressing the problems of teachers, particularly teachers who have come to Korea from abroad to teach on visas and contracts within the past month to three years
-facilitates and moderates forums for teachers to discuss their concerns
-uses the product of the forum and committee discussions to voice teachers' concerns, particularly those of migrant teachers in Korea, to the larger community in Korea
-works in various ways to build a community of teachers and their supporters in Korea
-builds a stable network of teachers and information of particular interest to teachers in Korea and beyond

Founding structure

The founder of FREED Busan-Gyeongnam is offering to act as founding Chairperson in the initial phase. The Chair recruits and leads a coordinating group. The regional area coordinating group elects coordinators to offices, aiming for a base of a Chair, Vice-Chair and General Secretary.

Should FREED groups be established in other regions, all coordinating groups in different regions would form the national committee. Should a national committee form, it would elect a national chair, vice-chair and secretary who name and divide the tasks set by the national committee and propose agendas for further work. They would execute the decisions of the whole national committee. In that sense, the national chair, vice-chair and secretary would form the executive body.

As for the tasks of the the coordinators (regional and could be for national ones too), they may be public relations (ex. media, promotions, spokesperson), record keeping (ex. members list, internet forum management, meeting minutes, photos and other), and strategizing (ex. political statements or campaigns, agenda-setting, organization-building, membership recruitment, and other). These coordinating groups (and the national committee should it exist) can be expanded and title of offices made by charter amendments by the coordinators (or the national committee should it exist).

Locally, chairs can find other volunteers to work as vice-chair and secretary as co-coordinators, and assign volunteers to other titles according to the interests and skills of volunteers and the work in demand.

Therefore the proposed base structure for FREED Busan-Gyeongnam is Chair, Vice-Chair and General Secretary, plus any more volunteer officers or auxiliary volunteer staff that come forward or are required.

As the organization grows, the structure may be altered and developed further through a Charter amendment by the regional coordinating group (or the national committee should it come to exist).

Values

FREED strives to be an organization promoting social equality and freedom. It strives to be an inclusive organization despite differences such as gender, nationality, ethnicity, color, sexual orientation, and religion among teachers. FREED supports the human rights of all. Furthermore, it aims to facilitate the particular living and working standards of teachers, and the working and living standards of all. In this regard, it holds to the credo of international solidarity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Part 2.

Refutation of untruthful remarks amounting to slander on the part of Greg Dolezal, national ATEK President, through his email campaign to defend defenseless actions against fellow officers and teachers with ATEK

Or , the Busan ATEK File, the real truth:

I was acting chair of Busan ATEK ever since Jason T contacted me and asked me to chair. We did not have enough momentum in terms of active membership to pull off a local general meeting and elections, but we did find a handful of dedicated volunteers. We had two secretaries consecutively who worked briefly before withdrawing. We had one on and off Prof'l Standards Officer, Corey A. R. Sean joined me in November last year. Then a couple, Lane and Katie, showed up to lend a hand a bit this past January. The appeal to get more members was having an effect, as was the publicity I was creating on Facebook, Koreabridge and so on. We had allies in the city. There was some growth at the start of this year, with a spurt in registrations resulting in a total roster of about 100, and the community was starting to get familiar with and confident in Busan ATEK when the mess occurred and Greg started trying to use procedures to condemn me and unseat me.

The tension had been escalating over style and role of leadership, decision-making processes, function of national council. I was made to justify and explain everything that Busan had accomplished. While they criticized and scorned Busan ATEK, I was made to explain and justify everything. There was a clash of visions between a techno-bureaucratic NGO and a more grassroots, simple consensus model. But mainly the national reps were not consulted and put to use, the execs started enforcing new rules and structures before a proposal went to the membership and the older by-laws formally changed. Other than that, the national execs were obsessed with Busan and kept trying to take command--they took over the members list, kept imposing officers, doing the local recruitment. I got totally fed up and blasted Greg. He started the witch-hunt, exposing the true character of the dogmatists and autocrats within the ATEK leadership, and I lost confidence and hope with ATEK and quit. They did not complete their attempt to pass a dubious "vote of non-confidence" against me, which contained mere insinuations and conceded there was no evidence, only accusations. This was the only national vote since Greg's election that ATEK experienced. it failed, of course. Since I left, Russell has hacked in or otherwise gotten control of my e-lists and facebook group, which I created and own. They or at least Greg is continuing his lies and slander against dissenters. If he had a defense and truth were on his side, he would not need to resort to these tactics.

Barbara

________________________________________
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject:
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 22:20:58 -0300

Since Greg Dolezal, President of ATEK (with 25 votes nationally of a manipulated vote!), continues to circulated slander against Barbara Waldern, the founder of FREED, I am refuting the many untruths and slanderous statements he his making around the country. This is long, but it is necessarily so. I'll answer these attacks once. Unlike Greg, I have not been circulating emails all over the country to plead or spread poison. BW

excerpt of an email message from Greg Dolezal in response to a recently registered ATEK member:

Actually, she was hostile to me. I never published the nasty degrading emails or the transcripts of the phone calls she had with me. You have one side of the story. I�m sorry that is the case. She told me to �*beep* off� told me that I was �incompetent� and that I was �imposing� and �not welcome at HER meetings�. All I did was recommend some recruiting strategies, which she viewed as usurping her power. I never saw this as a power issue. My feeling is that if someone has good suggestions they are worth a listen. Never mind that I was elected president and might actually be in the position to make such suggestions. I met some interested teacher who wanted to be officer � she obstructed them based on their association with me. That�s what happened.

I�m sorry to lose you if you must go, but the members and officers who remain will engage each other in the spirit of mutual collaboration and positive, productive, interactions. It is very unprofessional to circulate personal emails to the entire PMA (which she did). Eventually, I responded, because my fear (which this email justifies) is that she was abusing her access to the member lists to attack me personally because she didn�t like me. If you find that behavior acceptable then I guess we will also have a difference of opinion.

Barbara was unwilling to accept change and when it became clear that we expected all officers to be elected rather than appointed she quit. She was never willing to adapt to modern communication protocols (skype for example) as a way to operate. Even in our bylaws skype is listed as our primary method with the forums or phone calls next. I deeply regret it could not work out for her.

Refutation:

"Actually, she was hostile to me. I never published the nasty degrading emails or the transcripts of the phone calls she had with me. She told me to �*beep* off� ..."

LIE 1-There weren't any to publish. There was one blow-up when I got thoroughly impatient in a casual phonecall. I used the F word once in exasperation.

told me that I was �incompetent� and that I was �imposing�

Yes, he and Russell, membership coordinator inondated me and other volunteers with announcements and commands of inconsistent, fluctuating and contradictory procedural changes, which they were insisting and urging, yet were contrary to the existing by-laws because they had disregard for existing by-laws and were pushing their own regime of platoons of officials and web-work of technical applications. I objected regularly to the bureaucracy and practicality and relevance of such changes, and demanded that the by-laws be followed, and the membership consulted with a completed proposal for new by-laws to be put to a vote. I complained constantly that the national council was not meeting, and insisted that it should meet somehow, however many active reps we had. That is why there is a vote on the national by-laws now. I objected to the continuously changing and complicated technology that Russell preferred and was imposing on PMAs because they were labour intensive, unnecessarily complicated and required personal investments in tech. I saw this all as a distraction from the conditions and issues of teachers in Korea, especially teachers on visas.

Russell, appointed by Greg with barely any consultation to be the national membership in violation of the national by-laws because he is simultaeously the chair of Seoul, was imposing the system he was establishing in Seoul and saw no other way of operating, was rude and curt and dictatorial all the time, all which was stressful. I objected to the impositions that were being urged upon primarily one person, me--a volunteer--with no regard to the workload and bother it all entailed. Greg and Russell were intent upon taking over Busan PMA. Russell took control of the membership list, so that we didn't know who all our members were and could not contact them for quite some time, as one example. Greg and he were assigning new members to positions without knowledge of our group in Busan, assignments that were out of synch with the actual workload and needs of the PMA, not to mention in violation of the national and local by-laws.

LIE 2 �not welcome at HER meetings�.

Greg often turned down invitations to meet Busan members from the start, always insisting that seeing people in person was not necessary, and he never paid a call to our ally and office space, the Busan Human Rights Counselling Center. It had not been necessary to schedule regular committee meetings because of the level of activism, which was low, until we had a successful meeting in January. Under the circumstances, with the conflict between I and Greg, and the blow-up we had just had, I did not want Greg to appear at the following meeting in February, which I thought might turn off new activists. A Chair calls meetings and prepares for them; in this sense, the Chair manages meetings and thereby has a leadership role. Everyone communicating with me and meeting with me in ATEK activities knows there was always consultation and invitations to share.

LIE 3 "All I did was recommend some recruiting strategies, which she viewed as usurping her power. "

Greg first called me in late November. He immediately began issuing directives. There was no small talk, no effort to get to know me and the PMA. Actually, his main purpose was to get me to help him get a job, because he revealed that he was envious of my position in a university. He paid no heed to the accomplishments of the Busan PMA, the work that had already been done, and , in fact, appeared not to be conscious of it. There has always been a constant appeal for new members and volunteers to step forward. I certainly have not wished to do it all. Rather, he scoffed and flippantly declared that our membership should be higher, and that it should be really easy to get many general members in a big city like Busan. He demonstrated a lack of knowledge of Busan and didn't want to here any. This conversation, or monologue, set the tone of all the communications that followed with Greg. In this conversation, he recommended some activities, such as organizing a social in a bar, which he said the national body and he would support and he proposed a national meeting in Busan. I immediately set to work to organize a Christmas party and a bowling event on Boxing Day, which were well publicized. Greg and the national executive did nothing to assist. Nobody came to these events, as I had predicted, including Greg, although posting them served the publicity of Busan ATEK. We also made a local flyer and signs. I made a banner. I had just found someone willing to be a membership coordinator for Busan, Sean. We called some people. We found more internet opportunities. We made more allies. Sean talked to more people. We continued to get more members and found a few volunteers through labour case action by January.

By the New Year, Russell began to reconstruct the membership registration process, and by February the affadavit was online to be signed upon registering on the ATEK site. This procedure put in question the qualifications for general members, which Russell kept changing, finally taking over the approval and only requiring the verification of officers in PMAs, after a national director of communications was found to be working illegally. Now, anyone who has joined online is eligible to vote on the by-laws, so what gives? Who is a general member? They were never clear. It appeared that the requirement to see copies of residence docs had been eliminated. So what was recruitment, then?

In that same conversation, in which Greg was highly argumentative as he continued to be throughout this working relationship, Greg and I agreed that his role in the Busan PMA would mainly be to assist with recruitment. He wanted to be made an admin on the facebook page for Busan that I had created, so I made him an admin. But what recruitment did he do? He went away until mid-January, and upon our demands to see a national plan and meet with Greg, he and Russell met with us and went on to meet other membership groups. He never recruited anybody except this person, whose status I questioned, who he wanted to be labour officer. We invited Greg and Russell to meet some members at that time, which they were reluctant to do, although Russell showed up at an informal meeting in a pub that weekend. Greg had personal social activities that evening. The following day, in a coffeeshop, Greg presented an overview of his vision for changes, after he and Russell worked all day on it, and we were satisfied that there was a cohesive plan being worked on that would be put to a national vote in the not too distant future. That plan kept changing while they kept throwing new things at us and it is only now that there is a proposal circulating and vote happening.

LIE 4: "I met some interested teacher who wanted to be officer � she obstructed them based on their association with me. That�s what happened."

He proposed one mysterious person, someone in a curious situation apparently whom we had not yet met, as labour officer, a position not existing in local or national by-laws. Anyway, she was likely not an employee. We knew nothing about these labour cases she had supposedly worked on. Greg said he went with her to the labour office on a couple of occasions and that she had been a star. (He also bragged that nobody else in Busan ATEK had been handling labour cases, which made me irate because we had handled several, and successfully.) A labour officer is a key and onerous role. So there was hesitancy. I asked to meet this person and I invited her to our February meeting. I gave her my phone number. She never confirmed, did not show up because she decided to attend to personal matters that Sunday afternoon. She never called. Later, over email for a second time, she expressed regrets, then informed me that she had a daunting schedule of 4 to midnight 7 days a week, making it hard for her to attend meetings . Then she stated she had no desire to meet other officers, saying she "just wanted to help." Then this person, who had corresponded with me twice, and had just joined the organization, and had no introduction to the PMA or other members and volunteers, participated in the attacks on me through the non-existant "ethics committee". What sort of "Labour officer" would this person have made?

LIE 5: "It is very unprofessional to circulate personal emails to the entire PMA (which she did). "

Here is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, to say the least. I received the challenge from the ethics officer in Seoul informing me that Greg had made a complaint, and later the second one from the mystery woman who wanted so to be labour officer. I copied these and two or three of my replies to our coordinating committee and other volunteers with my replies to the ethics officer. When the attacks continued, daring to accuse me of racism, contriving this totally unjustifiable "vote of non-confidence", I also copied a couple of responses, then my resignation to the entire Busan membership. Of course they mentioned Greg's name as he was named as a plaintiff. Of course I expressed my dissent with the national leadership.

LIE 6: Eventually, I responded, because my fear (which this email justifies) is that she was abusing her access to the member lists to attack me personally because she didn�t like me.

What a response! This bogus ethics investigation, declared illegitimate by none other than Charlotte, the ethics officer in Seoul, did not bother to investigate the facts or get my side of the story; rather, it based its statements and findings on heresay without considering any defense. Hilariously, Charlotte conceded the process was bogus and that she had no business or power making judgements. She was pressed to make a ruling, but stated she had no authority to do that.

Basically, the whole effort was a smear, a character assault. Greg is the one who carried out and is still carrying out a smear campaign over email, as you can plainly see by this one sample of his communications. In these communications, he makes me the issue? What are the issues facing teachers? Is this why ATEK formed, to find fault and attack other teachers?

That a self-defense of a national campaign to attack my character and humiliate me should be made is wrong? No.

What a concoction, in the worst Nazi style, this "vote of non-confidence!!" That members around the country should pass judgment on a fellow member, and active volunteer, no less, based on insinuations geared to cast doubt and suspicion, and that the initiative should not come from the local coordinators--totally outrageous. An act of desperation of empire-builders frustrated by a sign of resistance to absolute rule. It was at this point that I gave up hope for ATEK.

LIE 7 and 8, the worst of all in this passage: "Barbara was unwilling to accept change and when it became clear that we expected all officers to be elected rather than appointed she quit. "

I just stated why and when I quit. Greg seems to suffer memory loss concerning the pseudo-formal claims he initiated against me, the "ethics" challenge and the "vote of non-confidence."

Change, in fact, is my middle name, as anyone who knows me knows. I showed above how I responded to (unfounded) criticisms about recruitment. The record of Busan PMA activity has been public, with all the efforts to mobilize members.

Talk about turning the world upside-down! Who has been the one insisting on the activation of the national councils, the representatives around the country? Who has been insisting on a national vote of the by-laws?

Who was the only chair talking about organizing an AGM in the PMA once the national by-laws were decided?

On another matter, I wish to again object to Greg Dolezal having made an announcement about FREED. It is out of line and erroneous.

Barbara Waldern,
past Chair of Busan ATEK,
Founding Chair of FREED

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[PatrickGHBusan]

Two threads on the same topic but here goes...

Pehaps the use of Nazi tactics is not helping the credibility of the author...just saying.

[rollo]

Like small children , namecalling and tantrum throwing. But not nazi's!

[TheUrbanMyth]

And this just goes to show why a union for foreign teachers (one that actually will accomplish something) is never going to work here.

Too many people wanting to be chiefs.

Within every organization there will be always people wanting to do things differently. And for this there are no plausible punitive consequences as there are in other organizations/unions. And the more splintered a group becomes the easier it is to ignore and marginalize.

[ChilgokBlackHole]

Before this thread gets deleted, I'd just like to say that the cherry blossom traffic was intense! Anyone who went south to see them this year was in for a real treat, as the peaches were coming out as well.

But what were the trees with the yellow flowers? I assume the pink ones were peaches, but I couldn't figure out the yellow. The pears aren't blossoming yet, so...it couldn't have been that.

[ttompatz]

[Young FRANKenstein]

The whinging OP is a good reason not to follow the current leadership of EITHER group.

How old are they? Ten? When everyone decides to grow up and act like mature adults, let us know.

[T-J]

I see this one going nowhere in a real hurry.

ATEK on the other hand, while on life support, has managed to make it a year. There is still a pulse and they are focused on building their membership. Down, but not out, time will tell.

[rollo]

This would be funny except these folks wanted to negotiate with the government.

[ChilgokBlackHole]

[sulperman]

A lot of people really like their lives to be dramatic, don't they....

I don't want these people working for me or representing me in any way. Thanks but no thanks. Get back to your own lives, please.

[Senior]

[sulperman]

[Goon-Yang]

Awesome! Another organization that will speak for me, but doesn't really care what I want. All these "we speak for all teachers in Korea" can bite my white a$$.

Noobs leading n00bs.

[TheUrbanMyth]

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