So you’re thinking of maybe moving abroad.
Moving abroad – possibly the most Irish working-class experience – is bouncing around in our lockdown lives. It came to mind here.
Can you stay in ELT but avoid abusive employers and precarious contracts? It is totally possible. But at the moment it might seem more possible abroad.
Remember: Ireland’s government works to keep employment standards for (and contributions from) its employing class VERY low. This places the considerable responsibilities that should be on those who profit from a business (only the owners) on the workers shoulders. Every day, month and year.
The employed class of people in the Irish ELT business do the extra work that employers should be doing themselves: defraying risk by finding credit, creating income stability by lowering ‘standard costs’ (delaying parenting, house purchasing, living in substandard accommodation or living with parents, delaying pension savings), constructing career paths (Is ADOSing really a step forward if it just leads to being a DOS which is still precarious relatively low-paid work?).
In Ireland’s ELT industry we have some very self-indulgent employers who can barely keep their schools together even while externalising all their risk on to any employees who happen to fall in. And failing that, just liquidating and leaving the problems for ‘the market’ to clean up. We need regulation.
Regulation would force these ‘entrepreneurs’ to mature as employers. COVID shows they can change when change is directed by government policy rather than ‘the market’. Our ELT union work has got us the beginnings of that regulation. But it will require participation beyond classroom and that means we need our jobs to pay more.
More robust regulation is a positive. It makes opening new schools harder yes- and that means schools that exist are more robust institutions that open are safer from snap closures to students and demands for if-and-when/ no-pension/ no-sick pay/ no-future contracts for teachers.
The regulation will need to make opening a school after COVID more difficult and working in a school much more worthwhile.We are looking forward to news about the Joint Labour Committee which will hopefully sit for the first time in 2021. This is due to the extreme advantage employers have taken with teachers and students. It’s also due to the hard working union members who have listened and read, talked and spoken about their working lives not just their classroom experience.
We deserve better. And because we are working for better, we’ll get it. So if you decide to move abroad to ‘TEFL’ (instead of just holding fast and teaching English here online until eventually we get back into classrooms again), join your union. If abroad, get active in your union there, or- if you can manage to hold out here- get active here. Now.
See the teachersasworkers.org Know Your Rights page. You might be surprised to learn that your rights in Irish schools are lower than in China in some cases and that Ireland has the worst union recognition rules in the EU. But it’s ‘home’. Fight for it as hard as you work for your employer.
Most importantly… Keep talking.
ELT Advocacy Ireland 