Job Discussion Forums

[avotius]

This all happened some months ago in Chongqing, but as I understand it the school has since spread out to other locations under several different names including VNII International English, Britain VNII, and Crown (part of the Crown construction syndicate).

I worked at VNII IE for about 15 months, one of the reasons I was there was because they had very good hours, I only worked saturday and sunday on a full time contract, made 75 yuan an hour for teaching and had office hours which were counted as 2 office hours equals one teaching hour. Office hours were any time I was at the school and not in class so it was handy when I had a spare afternoon. I also had a 1000 yuan a month housing and a 8000 a year air.

Since the beginning the school was pretty messy, there were no books or lesson plans or any type of material to teach from. They encouraged us to search for and download our own teaching materials online and wouldnt spend anything on anything. The schools were shoddily made, at the branch I was at there was a raised floor that fell through when one of the students rather large mother walked over it which caused lawyers and police and such to swarm all over the school for about a week.

The boss of this school, the ultimate in slime, a guy named "Billy" who also it turned out was a officer at the local PSB in charge of visas would harass the female employees all the time. The second in charge, the bosses girlfriend "Jesse" was also a slimy individual with a constant stream of lies flowing from her mouth. The other people in the school came and went every few months, the management except the very top changed so frequently that every month when I went in for my pay there was someone different there who didnt know what they were doing so almost every month there were problems with late or wrong pay.

A few months into working there a German teacher was arrested while in class for having a fake visa that this Billy fellow issued him, not long after an American was taken away for the same thing, I feared for my visa but nothing happened. Also the foreign teachers at the school changed constantly, many lasting for a month or two then gone. I was at one of the outer branches so I kept under the radar for a while.

After about 8 months working there the Billy guy left and took Jesse with him, there were a lot of money problems with this school then due to bad management and the fact that this Billy fellow had just bought a very very very expensive Mercedes and driver for his girlfriend, we were all quite happy about that, and this new guy "Kent" came in to take care of things. This was during the busy summer holiday where in a single month it was easy to pull in 12500 rmb for two months. Of course no one knew what was going on and for some reason all the foreign contracts got "lost" and the school said everyone had to resign. I forced my original contract on them and got to keep what I had, a lot of the other people got the big screw though.

Then there were more and more money problems and the main branch of the school changed its name to Crown while the other branches kept the VNII name, which caused another problem with people being under Crown and VNII contracts. Still I sat in my corner where no one seemed to notice. At this time there were also numerous news reports in the papers and on TV from parents of students who had got screwed one way or another.

Then this Crown thing changed again and the main branch became known as Britain VNII and Kent left and to our horror Billy and Jesse came back. It was at that time that they said Crown was a different school and that no one at the VNII schools during that time could not get pay because it was Crown who was supposed to pay them and that the outer VNII schools were not part of them even though they were paying us when they were there. Britain VNII's two head slimballs went on to say that the Crown employees would be kept on with their Crown contracts but would not be paid, if they wanted to be paid they could take it up with Crown. We were pretty ticked and started demanding our pay and interrupting the business locations with small protests outside the doors of the schools. We literally brought the schools to a stop, also because there was no one in the schools to work anyway.

This caused a big stink, and in the main branch and the outer branches over 300 of the chinese staff walked out on the same day. For what was left of us we got a lawyer and started to investigate the situation. It turned out that it is illegal for Billy, a PSB officer and public servant to own a private business of this type, also that the VNII/Crown change over was simply a name change and not a different business coming in. Also it turned out that the schools were not licensed to be schools and also they were not permitted to give out visa's to foreigners.

By the way, we had three news crews from two newspapers and one TV news show following us on every step of this.

We took our complaints to just about every government department that would let us in, departments of labor, education, foreign affairs, the PSB, even the Mayors office. It was really difficult as we found out the chinese governments way of taking care of problems is "passing the bucket" and wearing people out until they just give up. It was at the labor department that we seemed to have the best luck, the officials there took a long look at all our documents and contracts and such, then started investigations into the school and then declared the school illegal and ordered them to pay a fine of one million yuan. They next day we were all in the department of labor with our lawyer and the officials to be there when the school paid their fine, to everyones surprise, especially our lawyer, the school walked in with two briefcases full of cash and slammed them on the table. A couple of officials took them out with them money and a little while later came back and told us that because the school had paid their fine there was nothing they could do to help us anymore. The news reporters were stunned and started asking a lot of questions and the next day there was a story in the papers with a picture of the money.

Our lawyer at this point was going nuts, we had exhausted all our lines and taken a lot of time and even with the word of law on our side we could not make any headway at all. Then the Jesse person called us in for a negotiation and said that our trip was up and there was nothing that we could do and offered us a tiny amount of money (less then 5%) of what was owed to us (then at about 200,000 RMB including the 200 yuan a day late payment fees that we all had in our contracts). Some people took the small amount, being owed about 20,000 yuan and settling for 1500. That really hurt the rest of our positions and our lawyer told us that it would be useless to continue on as the school had also issued a notice to the PSB that there were many foreigners in the city with fake visa's which were given out by the school. Also it was told to us by the department of education that because the school was not registered properly as a school there was nothing they could do to help us and that the school was not required to uphold any of its contracts because it itself was not legal to sign them or something like that.

Yeah, so afterwards many of the people took off to other places, none of us got anything and got lost in the deadly loop of the chinese bureaucracy.

What im really worried about now though is my visa I have now, which is a residence permit for study, will expire next month which means if I want to reapply I have to go to the PSB where that ass Billy is working.


Moral of the story, if it stinks, get out fast.

[dragon777]

So, you were working on a study visa?? Not a proper Z-visa??? Come on, what do you expect?

[kev7161]

[william wallace]

Clearly "avotius" was both duped and exploited."dragon777" grow up and then re-read the posting.This will continue to happen,but what really is nauseating is when fellow ESL-ers shoot the messenger...Maybe when it happens to you,you can suffer in silence.

[avotius]

MOD EDIT, if they bothered to read the post they would have saw that I was in one of the outlying branches and kept under the radar and avoided trouble while still getting good pay. Also at then end I mentioned the visa I have as "...now though is my visa I have now, which is a residence permit for study..." Key word there people, NOW have.

[kev7161]

Allow me to be more in depth of my analysis:

Your OP does state that you were in some outlying area laying low and making the bucks. However, it seems (only seems, mind you, from what I read) you were aware of all the shenanigans during your tenure but continued to work there and certainly never came onto Dave's to talk about it, warn potential future employees, or even share war stories as it were. Granted, there's no reason why anyone should come here and tell us all the nightmares -- good, positive stories are also welcome . . . sort of.

I see that you say these things happened some time ago (a month? six months? a year?) but why warn us off now? Why not warn us as you left that place? What if things have changed there in the interim? (Ha! I kid.) So, appreciate the post, just questioning the timeliness of it and the reasons for posting it now.

[avotius]

I didnt actually find this place until recently, and I must say with the attitude of the people here, im not going to be posting here anymore, what a bunch of children. I didnt have to stick this warning up, and I spent my own time writing it as a courtesy to others, MOD EDIT So be it.

[andrewtphelps]

It is kind of hostile in here. I am hoping for change.