Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Marsh]

I worked at W Language School in Cheonan from January 2005 until February 2006. At the time, the school was owned by W Headquarters in Seoul. Things were fine in the beginning, but during spring 2005, our paycheques became sporadic, to say the least. More often than not, the foreign teachers would get half our paycheques (if any money at all) on payday. Sometimes we would not receive the remainder until a week or more later. Several times, the Korean teachers received 10% (yes, ten percent!) of their wages on payday. The school regularly lost Korean teachers and receptionists as a result of not paying them on time (and I�m aware of at least one who actually took the matter to the courts and won). The paycheque fiasco culminated in October 2005 when the principal of the school resigned because W headquarters had not paid her in several months. On a related note, we arrived at work one day in July or August 2005 to find an eviction notice glued to the wall of the teachers� room; it turns out headquarters had not been paying the school�s rent. The school never was evicted, so I assume they finally paid up.

The situation came to a head in early February 2006, when I was about to leave W. My severance pay was a month overdue, and I kept getting the usual runaround from headquarters: �We�ll pay you by the end of the day;� �we forgot to pay you yesterday but we�ll be sure to pay you today;� �we�ll send the money to your Canadian bank account,� etc. They also apparently began to screen their calls and quickly learned the school�s telephone numbers as well as my mobile number. Two days before I was to leave, I called headquarters from the school�s fax line and immediately got an answer. When I asked to speak to the accounts department, the person at the other end said in flawless English, �I�m sorry, there�s no one here who speaks English,� and hung up. I lost my temper; grabbed a red marker; wrote, �ON STRIKE. BACK WHEN PAID� on a sheet of paper; left it on my desk; and stormed out of the school. Interestingly, I was paid at the end of the day.

W did not, however, return my deposit of 600,000 won. I decided to let it slide for the time being as, unbeknownst to W, I was returning to Korea a month later (to work for another employer). Headquarters seemed surprised to hear from me again, but they gave me the same routine: �We�ll pay you by the end of the month�� I also discovered that they had stopped paying my pension contributions to the government five months before I left.

Over a year later, W has still not returned the money they owe me. As luck would have it, I�m now working for the original principal of W; she has opened up her own English academy. We plan to pursue W jointly if they don�t pay us soon. I�m aware that this is a step we should have taken long ago, but better late than never as they say.

There are three morals to this story:
1. Choose your employer carefully.
2. Stand up for your rights.
3. Never work for any branch of W Language School that is controlled by headquarters.

Mercifully, the Cheonan branch of W Language School has shut down.

[Roch]

[Young FRANKenstein]

[Cohiba]