Job Discussion Forums

[Pop Fly]

[Chris Smith]

Thanks for your comment about the Children's Director in that school. I don't know much about other school's Children's Departments, but I'll make sure your comments go directly to our head office and they can face the issue head on. If you or people you know work in that department, please make a complaint formally to Kojen. You will receive the hearing you deserve. If you decide to do this there are some important things to note:

1. Address your letter to Mr. Hou with the heading: Formal Complaint.
2. Introduce yourself (selves), and state the main point.
3. Make a list of specifics that can be checked by the company.
4. Don't use any inflamatory language.
5. Ask to meet Mr. Hou to discuss the situation personally.

Mr. Hou appreciates people who follow reasonable steps to get themselves heard. If the problem is not just, say, a personality clash and is a genuine grievance (especially if experienced by several people) he will treat it very seriously and take action.

As for the adults' issue, I know the director well -he's responsible for organizing the subsidized Chinese classes all foreign teachers can join. With your direct question about whether I can deny the accusations that have been made, I think I have no position to say either way because I have never worked in his school. If you ask me "Do I think the allegations are true?", I would say I am sure they are untrue, based on my knowledge of him as a director and as a person.

It seems that from your own experience, you can see that the director is a reasonable and helpful person. Reading those posts certainly makes me feel uneasy because it isn't the person I know. With regard to the number of posts you mentioned, try registering on this site two or three times with different user names. You could have a great conversation with yourself denouncing whoever you like, and no one would be any the wiser. It seems that is what has been happening, and not just on this site.

How do I know this? Because the author(s) for all these posts spelt the director's name wrongly (the same wrong spelling by every author). The author also used lots of the same tone and language-especially adjectives- in the posts.

As I said, it's a personal thing.

Chris

[EOD]

A very good friend of mine was working at the ELSi / Kojen branch in Koasiung when his father died back home. He put in for his vacation time and on the day he was set to go home the school refused to pay him as direct result of specific orders from the manager. He had a confirmed plane ticket leaving that night. Pay day be damned they were not paying him and nothing he could do about it. Not Surprising he quit immediately after returning to Taiwan, losing his work deposit and two weeks pay.

[Chris Smith]

The current director of Kaohsiung has worked there for 9 years. He has no recollection of this situation and can't see why the manager would be so cruel. Also, in Kaohsiung, no security deposits were ever taken from teachers (he says).

With a 20 year history it may be that your post is referring to the very early years of the company. If so, it's a bit unfair to measure a school's ancient past with today's standards.

As the teacher is no longer there it won't hurt to tell us his name (in a private mail if you like and I won't quote it). I can ask the director with clear information and tell you what he says.

Chris

[Xenophobe]

Work deposit!?! What kind of nimrod would allow that to be deducted from their pay after the coverage it has received for being illegal?

[TaoyuanSteve]

Deposits, believe it or not, are still common here. They are especially prevalent outside Taibei. I blame the employer for witholding them more than the employee for accepting that arrangement. My own policy re: deposits is thus: the larger it is the more alarm bells go off in my head. If a school is supposedly worth working at, why do they have to extort money from you to keep you there? Still, in some places they are still common practice and hard to avoid.

[Aristotle]

Allegations of wrongdoing against foreign teachers and illegal labor practices at ELSi / Kojen Language schools in Taiwan are well documented and widely available to almost anyone. A good indication that the head office doesn't know what's going is when complaints make their way in front of a judge or arbitrator and the ruling comes out against the school.
Lack of accountability has always been one of the biggest problems Taiwan has never been able to solve. Administrators may change but Taiwan is Taiwan.
A recent trend developing in many large chain schools is bringing in outside auditors and spot inspections of their various branches.
Another is the use of CCTV cameras in the schools to monitor what is going on in the school. While these types of practices may seem a little Orwellian to the uninitiated. Those who have been teaching in Taiwan for some time may be surprisingly supportive of such measures. The level of corruption and impropriety that exist in many schools with or without the main franchise's knowing is horrendous.
Documenting these kinds of problems may be the first step in solving one of Taiwan's most pressing problems, lack of accountability. It is the responsibility of teachers to bring these kinds of problems to light in the most public and serious way possible. All to often many people will simply let problems like the ones at ELSi /Kojen go on without trying to report it. By doing this they are not only undermining the little progress that has been made in the way of protection of the few rights they are granted, they are undermining all of our rights and the labor rights of future teachers. Stop whining about it and do something about it.

[Pop Fly]

[Chris Smith]

[Chris Smith]

[Chris Smith]

Pop Fly

I've discussed the issue about your former director with our recruiter and adults' dept. coordinator. She has asked that you please reconsider the formal complaint as you are the only person I know who has a valid grievance and is talking about it. Doing this will focus attention on the department and begin the process of fixing any underlying problem.

I'll be very happy to help you put this together. If you can collect any facts, names and posts by anyone relating to this problem we can include it in the letter. Send me a private message if you like or e-mail me.

This is a great chance to deal with this.

Chris

[clark.w.griswald]

I understand where you are coming from Chris, having worked within the head office of one of the large chain schools myself for many years, but I have to say that I think that you are being a little naieve. You are obviously happy there at Kojen, and more than likely have a group of friends/colleagues who are also comfortable with their positions there.

This doesn't however detract from the value of comments from people such as Popfly whose experiences have differed from your own. I think many of us can spot a rant at a glance, and I personally don't believe that Popfly's experiences can be classified as a rant. The story regarding the reason for his less than favorable opinion of Kojen seems based on some pretty genuine concerns. He hasn't wavered from his original complaint, nor has he padded it with a lot of superfluous information to attempt to make it more dramatic. Finally, he hasn't made sweeping generalization about the whole organization. Overall, his comments seem like sound advice, and no amount of back peddling by Kojen can repair what damage has been done.

My guess is that there would be less than half a dozen foreign employees in any position of responsibility in this regard within the Kojen head office. From my experience, even the most senior of these individuals, has only a negligible value when it comes to the decision making process. Sure you guys will be asked for your opinions on matters, and from time to time they may just accept something that you offer. You can all get together, thrash out all the problems, and put together a proposal outlining how to make Kojen the most foreigner friendly company on the island, but at the end of the day it is the locals within the company that will be making the decisions. More often than not these individuals do not understand the intrinsic value of predicting and avoiding problems, and would rather wait until there is a concrete reason to take action. This isn't meant as an individual crticism of these individuals, but it is a fact that you will come to appreciate the decision making processes that go on within the higher management of these companies.

The problem is that people who have really legitimate complaints generally don't want to put their name to the complaints because:

a) They are still working within the company and don't want to get turfed out

b) They have left the company but are still in the country happily working in another job. They don't feel the need to rock the boat as they have moved on from their past problems. Just because they won't give you names and dates doesn't mean that their complaints are not valid.

How long have you been working in a position at head office there at Kojen? The reason that I ask is that you remind me so much of myself when I was first 'promoted' to a position of authority inside one of these organizations.

My suggestion is that if you really want to improve Kojens image that you look to the future rather than concentrate on trying to disprove the past. I worked at Kojen many years ago and can say that it was no different from any of the other schools I have worked at - that's neither good nor bad. At the time I was working at Kojen, it was one of the top two schools in Taiwan. Now I would guess that it would probably come in at about number 7 or 8. That is quite a big drop when one considers that there are only about 10 big chains schools here in Taiwan.

Aristotle, what are you going on about? Have you ever even worked in a buxiban. Your views are so far off this planet that it leaves me wondering what you are thinking when you make your posts. Are you serious or are you just having a dig and trying to stir up trouble?

[Chris Smith]

[Rice Paddy Daddy]

Chris,

You should consider that Pop Fly has had problems with Kojen, Wall Street and Cut and Corner.

If you want his real name, please PM me for the details.

I've also followed his posts on forumosa.com, where he goes by the name TOE SAVE.

Take what he has to say with a grain of salt....

He defended the poor management at Wall Street a year ago and belittled those who criticised Wall Street.

Now Pop Fly has the nerve to do the same to Kojen.

Well, in Pop Fly's words, "Stop libeling" the company so many foreign teacher work for.

Pop Fly - you are and idiot.

Should I put up a poll, like the one you put up for Jason Seburn, asking people what they think of you?

You're a complete fraud, fake and shyster.

You have the audacity to publicly criticize Kojen, when you defended Wall Street's management and also behaved unethically with your business at Cut and Corner?

Give me a break.

You're a typical con-man.

[clark.w.griswald]

Chris you seem like a very reasonable and amicable sort of person. It would have been easy for you to have sat back and ignored the comments made about Kojen, yet you decided to stand up and support them. As I said in my last post Kojen is certainly not a bad school to work for, and I think that Markholmes and Fortigurn have both supported this contention with the recounts of their positive experiences.

I don�t think that Popfly has been the only one to voice concerns over the Number 4 school in Gonguan. It seems that the director there is really a nasty piece of work, however I guess that one would have to work there and encounter a conflict with her before you could really find out exactly how nasty she could be.

From my point of view you could do a lot worse than work for Kojen. At Kojen you get trained, you have books and curriculum, you have a schedule, you have support, and most importantly you get paid for the work that you do without any trouble at all. For a newbie, accepting a job at Kojen when you first arrive would not be a bad move, but considering the reputation of the Number 4 school you may best request that this be removed from the list of possible work locations. I would think that if the word got back to Mr Hou that new applicants were all specifically requesting that they not be sent No.4, and should No.4 then encounter problems as far as shortages in foreign staff willing to work at that school, then something may be done. As I mentioned before, I am pretty well convinced that the majority of Taiwanese companies prefer not to fix anything until it is broken almost beyond any repair. I mean the concerns about the director in school number 4 have been around for years now � but by all accounts it seems that she is still there. If any company, and this is not a direct criticism of Kojen, really wanted to make their school foreigner friendly, then they would have dealt with that problem a long time ago by transferring her into a position that didn�t involve face to face contact with foreigners.