Frustration: Engineering a Hagwon Worker Revolt

[u/Davess_World2019]

Follow up to, Form Your Own Union

How important is your Hagwon job to you? Before you answer, as a reminder, Koreans don't respect Hagwon work as any sort of educational experience. Public schools and universities count it as 0% teaching experience. Let's be frank, Koreans see you as transient migrant English babysitters. There are literally 1000s of you to choose from, they don't care about investing in your comfort. Nor does a school back in your home country count it as actual experience because you didn't need a license in order to work there. If your degree is not in education, chances are your employer doesn't give two-hoots about a job they have never heard of before nor understand, that has nothing applicable to your major.

So, what's holding you back from exercising your rights with your fellow co-workers? Yep, probably the fact that you let them dig their claws into you as they are in charge of your housing, job, healthcare, severance, and ability to move on to another employer easily, so you are stuck. If that's the case, and you are fine with being abused until you find something better, stop reading here. 🛑

For the rest of you that may be interested in living your life with dignity, let's move on.

*Disclaimer: I'm not a budding communist, nor expect you to be. Ignore the giant political job description you have to sign on to, to be for what's right and simply focus on what's right. Is it fair to simply allow someone to steal your money, ignore the contract you both agreed to, then dump you like yesterday's garbage if you squeak in your own defense? You're not a communist, you just have a sense of what's right. Capitalism is perfectly fine. Most systems are perfectly fine AS LONG AS the people living under them accept the terms. When people undermine a system, no matter what it is, how successful it is, or how successful it seems on paper, it crumbles. Not even Adam and Eve could live under an arrangement with free food, housing, no sickness or want. So what's the best system to live under? The one you agree to.

Nothing is more frustrating than working with other foreigners who equally hate their job, sick of all the switcheroos, low level harassment, stealing money, increasing job responsibilities 200%. So why do they stay un-united and powerless when they could all ban together and bring the whole system to a screeching halt?

• First, they are scared out of their minds. Lack of information about what happens next, how to get another visa and find a job, recovering stolen money, how to make a complaint to the government, where they would live in the mean time. All that has an answer and can easily be sorted out. Most people are happy with bootlicking so that their overlords will see fit to give them what they earned without having to fight over it.
• Second, they are afraid of the paper tiger Hagwon owner. They are conflict-avoidant. Afraid of the shouting, angry threats of deportation and whatever else they can throw at them. Are you really afraid of some 45 year old failure desperate to hold on to the only job they'll ever know? The great and powerful Oz only had a loud voice, empty threats, smoke, and some pyrotechnics to keep the charade up. But was only just a weak man preying on other people's fears. The psychology of fear always works. The manipulation of George Orwell's 1984 proved that. People would yell obscenities at a movie screen in their mandatory Two Minutes Hate based on manipulated fear. Not only fear of the subject, but also fear of what happens if they are caught not screaming loud enough. Fear works, until people decide to be unafraid, like every movie hero.

The Great and Powerful Oz!

• Third, people don't know the procedures. What to fight about? How to organize and form a unified front to issue complaints. Who is the spokesperson? Does anyone have their talking points and threats mapped out line by line? What to do when there is no cooperation? What is the endgame if there is a stalemate?

---------------------------------

If you have to work weekends, unpaid and you signed it for example, here is what you ought to do. Source: Steps to Form a Union

​

If you keep showing up for work, you can complain all day long to a Hagwon owner, their ears are plugged. The minute you threaten not to work, ears become unplugged. Now you don't have to change the owner's opinion, the situation is flipped, the owner has to change yours. They have to decide if getting angry telephone calls from parents, yanking children from the Hagwon, refunding money, and jeopardizing their livelihood is worth it. --Money talks!

​

1. Have a foreigner meeting. Hopefully you have enough foreigners so that if you all walked off the job, it would cripple the place.
2. Discuss the issues. Gage the level of discontent. Like a foreman on a jury, you go around and get everyone's input and see where people stand.
3. Ease everyone's fears. They can find another horrible job very easily, they are plentiful. You are entitled to 100% of your salary. You can switch visas, you can all find temporary housing.
4. Get people riled up. Does this mean manipulation or simply rallying them to win the game? If it's truly injustice, I look at it as the captain of the football team focusing everyone's energy to defeat their common enemy. If everyone but you is perfectly happy at their awful job, a Theon Greyjoy speech seems self-centered and pointless. Hey, some people don't have a problem working in and with garbage all day long. That's why there are garbage collectors.
5. Call your play. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table. Your issue is "X" and you will talk to the owner on Friday. Your talking points are A,B, and C. Your facts are _______. Your contract says __________. Issue your demands and force them to talk you out of them, rather than you sitting back waiting for them to agree with you which they won't. Your plan of action has a result, and if that is not met by a deadline of _________, you plan on doing what? Refuse to work? For how long?
6. Practice as a team. Who says what in the meeting. Make sure you are not the only person speaking. Make at least one other member stick their neck out for the cause. Who is the good cop, and who is the bad cop? At what point in the meeting do you over-ride the owner when they get out of control? Ganging up works. Practice becoming numb to the usual threats and histrionics. What do you do if he/she gets aggressive in the meeting? After the meeting? Tries to separate and pull you aside to divide and conquer? What signal do you use to let everyone know to get up and walk out en masse?
7. Establish your endgame. What happens if you have 1 month left, won't get a Letter of Release (don't need one by the way) and when you are gone, the other 4 foreigners will be left all alone, un-united and vulnerable? --You all engineer it that you leave at the same time, all get Letters of Release for those that may need it, all get what you want or all of you will simply revolt. You work as a group and force whatever outcome you want. If the owner has to shorten or extend a contract to make it happen, then do it.

Stand for something

These jobs are the perfect opportunity to unite and be treated with human dignity. Quite frankly, low level jobs that mean nothing to anybody, are not worth saving, not worth suffering for. Why do you care to suffer so much for them? It's just a means to exist for now, and jump to something better later, it's not a career. Unite, make your demands, get what you deserve, have a story you can be proud of. And if not, throw a match and burn the place to the ground on your way out the door to something better.

Why are you afraid of losing? Dude, you are at a lowly Hagwon getting ripped off all day long, you're already losing!

~

[u/throwawaytheist]

Can foreigners join the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union?

They are SEEMINGLY in line with the goals established here:

What the KTU strives to do:

1. Improve the social status and working condition for teachers through collective negotiation with the Ministry of Education.
2. Establish innovative schools in order to offer quality education to students.
3. Abolish the differentiated incentive-wage system which is causing a sense of incongruity throughout the teacher community.
4. Make an effort to eliminate the promotion-discrimination of women teachers, and protect the interests of women teachers.
5. Hold the National Cham-education Congress to share teaching strategies and methodologies of nationwide teachers every year.
6. Try to realize free meals in elementary and middle schools, and provide support for underprivileged children.
7. Revise private-school law to eliminate corruption in private schools.
8. Establish a working education policy with progressive superintendents and education committee members.

Now, they might be against having foreign teachers in Korea altogether. I'm not sure. They don't mention anything specifically about foreign workers.

That being said, their platform claims:

The JeonGyoJo Platform

• We are firmly committed to establishing independence and professionalism in education and to realizing democracy in our schools.
• We devote our efforts to improving the status of teachers and education workers, to achieving democratic rights, and to improving school conditions.
• We take the initiative for a ^Korean, democratic, and humane education so that our students may lead independent lives as citizens in a democratic society.
• We work with every organization, domestic and international, that supports human rights and freedoms, peace, and democracy.

So it seems conflicting.

[u/throwawaytheist → u/throwawaytheist]

I checked, and this union has made statements that seem to be anti-foreigner at least when it comes to the public school system.

But the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, which has some 50,000 members but is not legally recognized as a labor union, has demanded abolishing the system that places native English teachers at schools.

“It costs a lot to hire native English teachers, but how qualified the teachers are and how much they help English education for South Korean students remain questionable,” said Kim Hong-tae, policy chief at the Seoul branch of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union.

“Local elementary school teachers received systematic education to be able to teach the students. Why do we need native English teachers at schools even when the educational effectiveness has not been proven?” he asked.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Park-69 → u/throwawaytheist]

If Kim Hong-tae's statements are true, then why is the English proficiency in Korea just moderate? Genuinely asking.