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Employment Contracts | |
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Work Hours and Shifts
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Working conditions and work hours can vary from school to school. Some schools have split shifts, some have set hours between 9 am and 7:30 pm, some have very early business English classes and a few offer classes on Saturdays. The majority of jobs available will have some kindergarten and elementary classes. It is also very important that you have access to the school?s annual planning calendar so that you can see the schedule of activities and holiday times. You could quite easily turn up at work one morning only to be told that you are not required to teach, and that they thought that you knew this!' Always check weekly rosters and timetables often as they do change, or you may be asked to swap for another teacher. You will be required to fill in a time sheet to record your attendance at your classes. Keep your own copy of classes worked. Teaching on an E2 visa in Korea, you will be employed on a contract that specifies you complete 100-120 work hours a month. Officially this is not full time work under Korean labor law. To be officially ?fulltime? you would be working 44 hours a week. Your contract is for a specific term (12 months) but could be assessed as pro-rate to full term work under the labor law for holidays and other aspects if they have not been clearly identified in the contract. An amazing amount of confusion has already happened because of this ?fulltime/part-time/12 month? aspect of employment and it will no doubt continue to cause problems in the future. The Korean teaching staff at your school will most likely be employed on full time contracts and will be paid differently to you, and therefore they will be expected to be onsite for all of the working day or as needed by the employer. Because your contract is a ?monthly total of 100-120 hours?, your weekly total of hours should be approximately 30 hours. But it may be that one-week you work only 20 hours and another week you work to the maximum of 40 hours. The fact that it is an average of 30 hours a week does not mean that you are entitled to overtime payment for any hours over 30 hours. In fact under Korean law it specifies you only get overtime after 44 hours a week. If you are employed at a school where your classes do not add up to 120 contact hours a month then your employer will be paying you for the base contract hours anyway so you might be expected to work on other tasks for the school, such as making materials or promotional work. If a school has just newly opened it is important that they have a foreign native speaker onsite to promote the school. In this situation is very likely you will have very few classes initially but the employer can still expect you to be onsite for the average 6 hours he is paying you. As the student roll increases, so do your classes. Most schools try to finely balance your timetable so that you do indeed work your full 30 hours. Please note you will only be paid for 100-120 hours and this is contact class time so do not automatically expect that because you have done three 50 minute classes in a row, that you will be paid for 3 hours work. Some employers do kindly pay for the full hour and some do not. You cannot demand that they just round the work hour up to 60 minutes. In fact, if you do 3 classes you will be paid for 150 minutes. You do not get paid the 30 mins (3x 10 min) between classes. It is highly likely you won't be able to leave the school during these breaks because the time is too short. You are not paid for lunch times and you cannot be made to assist with the lunches for the children. We recently had a situation where a young male teacher demanded overtime for his lunch hour because he was onsite. In fact the school was feeding him his lunch for free along with the other staff, but because he thought he was ?onsite? he should be paid. I guess there is no such thing as a free meal? The school was not requesting he stay and get a free lunch, instead they were doing it as a gesture of kindness. Preparation time is not paid and many schools do demand you are onsite a lot more than your specified teaching hours. We are aware of a major franchise operators (we don?t work with) that specifically write into their contract ?2 hours of prep time a day?. In affect this is giving them licence to have you on site for 2 full free hours a day unpaid. (10 hours a week) plus all the time between classes, so in effect this could add up to 3-4 extra unpaid hours a day!!! Normally preparation and planning time is up to you to carefully consider in a professional manner, and to be early for classes with all your materials ready. Please always keep a private record of the hours and days you worked, and any overtime and swapped sessions you have done. This may be needed to check against your pay slip to see if you have been paid the correct amount of money for the classes you taught. If you find you have not, it is a sensible idea to write a formal note to the director outlining the differences, and ask politely for it to be checked and reported back to you with an explanation for any differences. Do not take the stance of fronting up to the director and accuse him or her of underpaying you, as you will risk having the pay slip NOT being looked into or a large delay in the situation being resolved! Your pay slip may have included other deductions that you had not fully understood such as a housing rental bond for the first 3 months (if your contract states this).
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Our Program | Employment Contracts | Terms & Conditions of Employment Information about Teaching in Korea | Living & Surviving in Korea | Useful Links Applications & Contact Details | Korean Employers Application Form Copyright © World English Service Ltd. All rights reserved. Last updated 17/12/2004. Design & development by Karere.
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Young boy working hard |