Original Article By ChinaLawBlog.
I have seen at least a ten-fold increase in prison, visa and payment problems for teachers from China (and nowhere else in the world). It has gotten relentless to the point of being depressing. If the emails we are relentlessly receiving are any indication (and they have to be), the following is happening in China in what feels like every minute:
WeChat Official Account: ExpatRights
1)Teachers are being drug tested using their hair samples. Many are testing for cannabis and being jailed for 30 days or more and then being deported. This is happening to newly arrived teachers who insist they did not consume any cannabis since arriving in China. Listen up everybody, cannabis can show up in hair testings up to (and even sometimes beyond) 90 days after you have consumed it. So if you are going to be teaching in China and you do not want to spend time in jail and get deported, please, please, please go at least four months without consuming ANY cannabis before you go there and please, please, please do not consume any cannabis while there. None. Zero. Zilch. 没有. Aucun. Keiner. PLEASE. Invariably, the schools use this as a reason not to pay the teacher whatever is owed.
2)Teachers are being checked (or reported on) for having an improper visa for China. The teachers are then being tossed in jail and then deported or just deported straight away. Invariably, the schools use this as a reason not to pay the teacher whatever is owed. It appears to have become very common (as a cost cutting measure) for schools to have teachers come to China and start their teaching on tourist visas, all the while claiming this is perfectly legal — it isn’t. The teachers believe this until the day they are arrested. Near as I can tell, the schools rarely if ever get in any real trouble for this but the teachers sure do.
3)Teachers are not getting paid. Just this morning I got an email from one teacher who say that she and another 75+ teachers in her city (from various different schools) have not gotten paid for months. And another email mentioning nine teachers in another city who also have not been paid. Add to this the pretty much daily emails I get from teachers who do not get their last paycheck or the airfare reimbursements or the bonuses they were promised and it has become clear that it is open season right now against foreign teachers in China. The schools clearly believe they can blow off paying their teachers with impunity because they are right. When teachers ask me what they should do about getting paid my response is usually to say that they can retain and pay a local Chinese attorney to try to get paid, but the odds of a foreign teacher prevailing on such a claim are not good and pushing at all hard to get paid can have all sorts of negative ramifications. Schools will pull teacher’s work visas or refuse to assist in moving it to a new employer. They may also seek to have you deported so they can be sure to avoid having to pay wages owed and it is not uncommon for schools to make up claims about their teachers and to threaten to “make sure they will never work in China again.” You therefore need to think long and hard about getting bogged down in these sorts of disputes and even how they might harm your long term career prospects.
From beginning to end, the game is rigged against English teachers in China. The China employment relationship is complicated and if done wrong, employees can and do end up in jail. The only relevant portion of a China employment contract is the Chinese portion and so teachers who do not speak Chinese have no clue what their employment contracts say and no clue even whether the English language portion of that contract accurately translates the Chinese portion — I can tell you right now that the odds are about 100 to 1 that it does not. And even if you are able to read the Chinese portion, unless you have a comprehensive knowledge of China’s employment laws in the specific locale in which you are working. Our China employment lawyers consistently represent high-level China employees in their employment contract negotiations but English teachers simply cannot afford such assistance. This makes them incredibly vulnerable from day one and their employers know this and they don’t hesitate to take advantage of it.
I have reached the conclusion that the best thing an English teacher can to do protect themselves from the sorts of things mentioned above is not to take a teaching job in China in the first place. Go elsewhere. And if you are teaching in China now, leave now or just resign yourself to your fate. I wish I could give better advice than this but I cannot. Sorry.
WeChat Official Accounts: ExpatRights
http://www.ExpatRights.org
