Job Discussion Forums

[nighthawk]

I�m an American working in South Korea. I�ve got some problems with my employer, and I�m thinking about going elsewhere. I just want to understand my options. In South Korea you get a work visa that lasts 1 year. One of the things that really irks me about South Korea is that if you want to quit your job and get another in SK, then you have to get a letter of release from your 1st employer in order to work legally or you have to leave the country and wait until your 1-year work visa expires before you can reenter. Well, as I�m sure you can imagine, there are a lot of employers that don�t provide these letters of releases like they should, so the teacher either has to put up with his employer�s b.s., try to fight the system legally, which is often futile, or pack his bags and leave the country. Is a letter of release required to change jobs in Turkey? Can a teacher just quit a bad employer and start working for a better one? Do you have to leave the country? Basically what I'm asking is what happens if you find out that your employer is a scumbag and you want out? What are your options then?

Also, how common is it to work in Turkey illegally? How much do you get fined if you get caught working illegally? How long do they prohibit you from reentering the country if you get caught working illegally? Thanks in advance for the help.

[sweetpea]

As for the question of working illegally: right now two-thirds of the teachers at TED Bursa are illegal. Most of the people I know are working illegally... present writer, excepted.....

I left TED after they refused to pay me for failing to sign a registry book that I knew nothing about!!! Anyway, long story....

When I went to Cyprus on holiday the following week, I was fined $20 USD and had to pay another $100 entry-fee to get back in. I have a work visa, however. Sooooo... I don't understand what in hec happened. Anyway, I am at a new school now, and apparently, I am legal. I don't know how any of it works... so I may have been of little help to you here. I would suggest you leave SK and come to Turkey as many friends have been to SK and said that it is boring compared to Turkey. Yes, the money is better there, but life is better here!

Baris, Sevgi ve Mutlulak

[nighthawk]

Thanks sweetpea. I'll keep that in mind. I'm not burnt out on South Korea just yet, but I can smell it around the bend. It's coming sooner or later. I just want to have my escape route planned for when it does.

Say, do you like System Of A Down? They've got a song called "Sweetpea". I've seen them live. Awesome band!

Thanks for the advice. Anyone else care to reply? -nighthawk

[ghost]

There are no release letters in Turkey.

If you work legally in Turkey, most contracts state that you can leave your position if you give one month notice....but in many cases you can only leave if you have a genuine `hardship case` - some of those include - illness in the family, personal depression etc....

Some contracts state that if you break your contract before it expires, you have to pay a large release fee.

Paradoxically, some contracts also state that if the school fires the teacher, then the school has to pay the teacher an extra month salary.

This was the case for ghost - who worked for just one month at Antalya Koleji in 2003, before being fired one month later after a classroom incident in which a student collided with the whiteboard....

Ghost was paid the full month, plus the extra month, and came out with a net benefit of $3000 U.S. equivalent, which he was able to use for Turkish language study at Tomer Institute....so there are benefits to being fired, although it would be silly to advocate that route.

One notices that in Turkey there are many rules on paper, but that a large number of those rules are circumnavigated or just ignored.

Many employers simply do not want to go through the paperwork and time involved with getting legal papers, so teachers work illegally.

The Ministry of Education in Ankara knows about this state of affairs and has not clamped down yet. There is a tolerance, but how long that will last remains to be seen.

Turkey has many down sides, and you can read about those in ghost`s previous posts, but in retrospect, Turkey is still probably the `best deal` in Europe for the average ESL teacher.

[yaramaz]

Actually there are such things as release letters, which seem to be required when finishing one job and starting another without starting the ikamet/work permit processfrom scratch. I only learned this on the weekend. Even though I'll be legally leaving my job at the end of my contract, my new employers need the release letter in order to process my permit for next year.

[ghost]

So Yaramaz - is it really official...you are leaving your adopted homeland of Kayseri for better things in Istanbul?

One recalls that last year you were to go to IH Suadiye, but then backed down...

In any case it will be interesting to learn about the new post in Istanbul.

In the meantime, you have earned a good holiday in Canada or elsewhere.

[yaramaz]

Yes ghost, it's true. I did it. After many months of serious waffling I decided I really needed to get out of Dodge...
I'll be spending the summer on the west coast of Canada, camping and travelling around, remembering what trees and ocean are like.