GEOS Language, British Columbia
$20/hrTuesday, December 16, 2014
Converse School Review by Former Employee
Excerpts from:
Former Employee - English Teacher in San Francisco, CA
I worked at Converse International School of Languages full-time (more than 5 years)
The owner is extremely unlikeable and the bottom line -- school profit is the main concern. Teachers are not appreciated and treated pretty unfairly.
Get new management! Very negative and nasty, and not fair where compensation is concerned. A past academic director was concerned for teachers, but was fired.
Monday, December 15, 2014
NLRB Rules Employers Cannot Make Employees Sign
The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that requiring employees to sign arbitration agreements that contain clauses prohibiting employees from pursuing class or collective actions is a violation of federal labor law.
Friday, December 5, 2014
UK Worker Can't Afford to be a Teacher
Excerpts from: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/04/zero-hours-contracts-teaching-job-insecurity?CMP=fb_gu
I’m tired of thinking I’ve secured a future for me and my child, tired of thinking I won’t have to worry about whether we both eat or whether we have heating, tired of worrying how we will cope if my child loses their school coat. I’ve decided to leave teaching for a supermarket job that will give me the security of knowing how much I’ll have available to pay my bills each month.
Before the summer I regularly worked 30 contracted hours a week across three organisations, over seven days (remember, as a teacher, preparation and marking aren’t counted so this is, in reality, more like 60-80 hours). That was how much I needed to work to ensure I didn’t need to claim work-related benefits – which would bite at my pride too much. But despite being told I would most likely have teaching in September, the phone didn’t ring in August or September. I swallowed my pride, claimed benefit for four weeks and applied for everything. In November I got a full-time post on a zero-hours contract. Bit by bit this has been wheedled down to six hours. I am back where I started, and devastated.
It’s humiliating not being able to pay my own way, having to check constantly if and how much I will be paid (one employer still owes me more than £600 – but there’s a time lag of almost eight weeks between them setting me up on their systems and being paid). It also ruins my mental health. I start wondering if it’s me, will it ever end, is there anything I’ve missed, anything else I can do? My anxiety levels are through the roof. Going to a supermarket brings on a racing pulse, light-headedness and complete panic that, if I buy food today, I won’t be able to pay for tomorrow’s crisis.
The thing about zero-hours contracts is that they’re normal. You can dress them up in all kinds of fancy language, but however you finesse it, in my personal experience, most FE employers use them for most of their staff. The handful of full-time posts that exist are often, understandably, snapped up by internal candidates who are already familiar with the system – which, by the way, creates another pressure to stay in a job, on a zero-hours contract, where you can’t pay your bills, because maybe, one day, it’ll be you. Zero-hours contracts also don’t relate to how good you are at your job or how hard you work. That’s irrelevant. You can have 30 hours teaching a week in July, all your students pass and in September you’re unemployed – except you’re not, because there’s always that hope that if you take on one more job, ask one more time, work a little harder, you may just be able to get by.
Zero-hours contracts are inhuman. They stop people planning for their futures and leave them in a state of perpetual fear. They encourage people to become workaholics and damage family life. And imagine the cost to society. Zero-hours contracts mean lower tax collected, less student loan – if any – paid back. There’s the cost to families too. When others are spending time with their kids, I’m working, snatching moments with my child by text or phone from seven in the morning until nine at night and weekends. I dread to imagine what my child thinks of me. I’ve tried to explain, but it’s difficult. So, in half an hour I will resign, teach my last class and head to an open day at Sainsbury’s in the hope of a job that means I can have the heating on, buy my child winter shoes and not panic next time a letter drops on the mat. Maybe I can start daring to imagine that it won’t be another crisis … but simply a Christmas card.
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