Korean Job Discussion Forums

[lesza]

My director has been asking me for a while to help her re-write the contract to specify how many minutes a classroom hour constitutes and how many hours the employees must work before qualifiying for overtime.

Currently, we interpret the contract this way: the teachers work 30 classes per week and qualifies for overtime after 35. The normal practice of the hagwon is that a teaching hour for elementary is 50 minutes and for kindie it's 40. She wants the language of the contract changed to state that a classroom hour is 60 minutes. This means that we could be required to work seven classes per day (vs. 6 now) and not qualify for overtime until after some ridiculous amount of teaching time. I have told her that I will not help her re-write language that hurts the employees (me and future teachers).

My director belongs to an association of hagwon owners in the area and coincidentally (hmmmm) this same language has been coming up at other nearby institutes too. Before you sign a contract, check and see what it says about teaching time and what constitutes a classroom/ teaching hour. IF the language is vague, you could get screwed down the line when interpretations change. If it's spelled out clearly in the beginnning at least you know what you're in for (and pardon the vulgarity, you can tighten your ass cheeks ) .

[hellofaniceguy]

I personally would not agree to teach 30 hours. The "uneducated" coming to teach in korea might fall for that trap. Meaning unless you have been around the block a few times in korea, most contracts will screw you. Agree to teach "X" amount of classes per day. Period. 5 50 minute classes a day is more than fair at hokwons. Someone agreeing to a 100/120 hour contract will get educated real quick like! Especially if the classes are 40 minutes long. Kinder classes takes a lot of patience, skill and understanding not to mention the prep time IF the teacher is doing it correctly. So those 3 kinder classes a day turn out to be an hour or so of prep time every day. Most hokwon owners get together weekly/monthly for meetings. They are banding together more and more to make contracts more stupid. Yet, most hokwons don't follow the contract themselves! In Suwon you got what, ECC, YBM, O.N.E. and a few others who don't follow their own contracts verbatim. They don't follow the labor law verbatim, etc. but then what companies do in korea?! The contract is just a starting point in korea; each teacher needs to make changes to get the BEST deal for themself. Until "we" all stop signing bad contracts, it won't get better in korea.