We’re happy to report on developments at EC where, after agitation from teachers at EC London, management have agreed to paid CPD and paid preparation for observed lessons. And the London EC teachers didn’t only win it for themselves, they won it for all EC teachers across the UK! Read on to find out how they did it.
Teaching.
Planning.
Admin.
CPD.
Meetings.
Observation preparation and feedback.
And more besides.
How many of these elements of your job are paid? A few? Just one?
It is “industry standard” in this country to pay teachers for as few work tasks as possible, and EC London is not alone in only paying for teaching and nothing else. However, that is starting to change.
At the beginning of the year, teachers at EC London submitted two petitions to management: one asking for all work to be paid and for a pay rise that reflects the sharp increase in the cost of living, and another asking for employee reps. In response to the reps letter, we were told that they favoured an open-door policy and it was not company policy to have employee reps. The conversation went nowhere (but more on this later).
The response to the pay and conditions letter was markedly different. Management scrambled to arrange a visit from the COO in February this year, and teachers presented the facts of the cost of living, alongside a two-column list of unpaid tasks that took up a full slide. The excuse is always that this is just the way the industry is, so we countered with this: if the industry treats its workers poorly, then let’s lead the industry to do better.
We had testimonials from teachers in their forties living in shared houses, teachers who have no money left at the end of each month, teachers working two jobs to make ends meet (and EC is one of the better paid schools in London!). Tensions were high, but still we were batted down with “business reasons” and that pay rises would be between two and five percent for the next few years. However, one win came out of it: our sick leave was doubled from 5 days to 10 per year.
But still, business reasons aren’t food vouchers, so we gathered ourselves again and submitted another letter, emphasising that teachers will be forced to leave the industry and asking to negotiate a settlement. The response: the imposition of a three percent pay increment and being told we’re welcome to leave if we want to, with the excuse that everything they do has to be the same across the company.
Three percent? When inflation hit ten in 2022? We were livid. The CEO came over to deliver promises to set up working groups to look at the issues we’ve raised, to ask for our patience and to implore us to hope. As one teacher pointed out during this meeting, hope doesn’t pay the bills.
Summer has happened, and as we were coming back to our campaign the following announcement was made: CPD will now be paid at admin rate and observation prep and feedback will be paid at 90 minutes teaching rate. Would any of this have happened had we not asked for it? We’re not kidding ourselves.
Over the summer, we also heard that our colleagues in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto are unionised. Toronto have shared with us the union agreement they have made with EC to determine pay rises for the next three years, among many other things—seriously, click here and read on from p19, it’s amazing. It turns out that they do deal with reps and treat schools differently after all. We are now cooperating with the Canadian schools to compare pay and conditions in order to take the company to task and truly improve things for every worker at EC.
But we don’t just want this for EC, we want this for every TEFL worker in the world. If reading this inspires you to do something similar, try talking to your workmates about how they feel at work, what parts of the job feel unfair, what they would like to change. And as always, you can reach out to us for advice and support on [email protected]