Job Discussion Forums

[Ger]

My hours are 9:00 to 18:00 five days a week (maximum 30 hours teaching per week).

Yesterday's schedule showed a 17:30 to 18:30 lesson with one son of one of the bosses. I told that boss that my hours are 9-6 and was told that she "didn't know". Which is interesting because I came in late once and was sharply reminded by the previous manageress of my hours.

Anyway, then wifey briefed me on the courses I have to teach and told me to talk to the new young manageress about the times of the courses.

Subsequently, I found out that the published schedule has four other 17:30-18:30 timetabled lessons. I have sent an email to wifey's husband asking him is it legal for me to work outside of contracted hours and do we have to inform immigration of any contractual change.

Does anyone out there have any advice in this matter?

Ger

[Ludwig]

Seek alternative employment.

[ChrisRose]

A sticky Wicket.

Basically, according to the employment ordinance, any overtime is payable at time and a half.

Hence, at the very least you should be able to get payment of 1 � times your hourly rate for the additional 30 min. lesson.

Of course the employer can�t force you to work outside your contract. So it is up to you, how diplomatically you would like to handle the situation.

Can we enquire as to which school / learning centre your working for?

[dandan]

No offence, but have any of you ever had proper jobs in the real world before you started teaching TEFL? God forbid that any of you get a job in a school in the UK (or pretty much any other job), you'd be given pretty short shrift if you made such a fuss about working half an hour extra.

It seems to me that you have several choices:

1) You can, of course refuse to do it. Seems a bit petty, but depends on your relationship with the school and the general situation in the school.

2) You can do it in return for a mutually agreed overtime payment.

3) You can come to some mutually agreed arrangement for time-in-lieu, eg, you work till 6.30 four days a week and leave at 4.00 on the other day to make up for it.

4) If you have a good relationship with the school you can just do it and cash in the favour later when you need some help from them.

5) You can quit if it's a big deal for you or if you can't come to a mutually acceptable agreement (or if you don't like working there anyway).

All this assumes that these come within your agreed 30 teaching hours per week. If it takes you over your agreed 30 teaching hours then obviously you should definately recieve overtime payment. If not it's just a scheduling issue which should be relatively easily sorted out between you.

30 teaching hours per week does seem rather high, but then that's what you agreed to in the contract. I guess it's not too bad if it's just 1 to 1 or small group tutoring type stuff rather than classroom teaching.

Of course they don't need to inform immigration every time you work half an hour extra, can you imagine how much work that would generate for immigration department?