US applicant: “How many sick days do I get?”
German HR department: “I’m sorry what do you mean?”
US applicant: “How many days may I call in sick per year?”
German HR department: “Er… that depends on how often you get sick?!”
US applicant: “Wat.”This exact thing happened to my partner. Her rep was like, what is a ‘Sick Day’?
I live in Norway and have 21 sick days. That means days that I can self report as sick. (Influenza and such) I can do this for three consecutive days I think. Then I have to get a physician to write a sick leave. For anything serious you have one year on sick leave before more long term solutions will have to be found. Sick days does not include doctors appointments (its their own quota) or home with sick child (10 days) Pregnancies are their own thing, but often you go on sick leave before birth because being pregnant while not an illness makes you feel ill. We have one year of paternity/maternity leave first three months are reserved for mother, then shares but both parents MUST take three months. (Can get around by company paying for the leave of the one supposed to go back to work.) Father gets two weeks just after birth to settle things at home.
Thanks for the input!
Does anyone else find a bit odd to phrase basic labour rights as ‘perks’?
“nobody asked me questions during my maternity leave”
Yeah. Because it’s the fricking law both in Germany as well as Austria. Her boss would be in hot water. 1800€ fine per case (means per question) up to 3600€ for repeat offenders. It does not change a thing if the mother offered it or not.
The Austrians are actually quite lenient with that. German law gives fines up to 30.000€ and in cases that are seen as endangerment of the child up to one year of prison.
We seriously do not fuck around with that here.
(The same goes for vacations)
for any fluent English speakers out there, it’s a very similar situation if you want to start teaching English abroad.
20-25 teaching hours a week, sign up bonuses, airfare reimbursement, at least a couple months of vacation per year, much lower cost of living in most countries, with maybe the field-specific benefit of thousands of job openings currently available.
Plus you get an adventure the whole time you’re in another country, new experiences and new cultures.
Definitely why I never went back to the work culture in the US.
Teaching here is a 20/20h for a fulltime job and you get around 90 days off, but you can’t choose when to take em.
2 weeks off for the easter holidays, then 6 weeks of work, followed by another 2 weeks of holidays. Those start tomorrow officially, as Monday is a national holiday.
Are you tough enough to handle 6 whole weeks with only the weekends off?
Is anything more necessary than being a fluent speaker?
Not OP, but I taught English in Japan. You need a bachelor’s degree to get a visa there. It doesn’t need to be related to teaching/language, but that will help make you more competitive.
nope.
some countries and schools require a TEFL certificate or prefer candidates with an associate’s degree depending on the position, but if you want to teach English, all you need is to be a fluent English speaker.
some English teachers i know aren’t even native speakers. they are very good at English and have a minimal accent.
Very interesting. You seem to be quite knowledgeable about this. Could you give me a few pointers before I go searching - if it’s not too much to ask?
Sure. Some general recommendations:
- If you care a lot about where you teach, get a TEFL certificate. this is the one I got. All PDF tests, lifetime certification, internationally accredited, valid for any ESL job globally, plus TEFL certificates automatically give you access to the higher end of the pay scale.
You’ll be able to teach in your country and school of choice with this certificate.
That said, you don’t need a TEFL certificate to start teaching and if you fly to China on a tourist visa tomorrow and are a fluent English speaker, you will get a job in one of the first schools you inquire at. Someone might even stop you on the street to offer you a job if you look like a foreigner.
-
If a job doesn’t feel right, keep looking. There is a large, constant demand for English teachers globally and there is zero reason to take a job you aren’t comfortable with or a job that doesn’t provide the compensation and benefits you’re looking for.
-
DavesESLcafe is one of the original TEFL sites, and will give you an idea of what job postings look like online(that’s the China job board page), although typing “English teaching jobs in _______” whatever country you want is going to net plenty of job postings you can apply for.
I could go on, but I don’t want to overwhelm you.
If there’s anything specific you want addressed or you have followup questions, I’m happy to answer them.
TYVM. Im still amazed about it all. So I don’t really have specific questions. Feel free to go on, I won’t be overwhelmed. I may take a while to answer, but that’s unrelated to the topic at hand 😄 To clarify: I’m not in the US, but Europe. Yet I’m still very much interested. I’d be working for a European company that does business in other parts of the world? Why are the hours so agreeable? Is it just the demand? China wouldn’t be my first choice, but other parts of S/E Asia or South America perhaps.
The demand is a big part of it. Most non-native English speaking countries have hundreds or thousands of job postings available today, so if they’re going to attract the relatively few English teachers out there, the hours, pay and benefits have to be competitive.
SEA/South America are wide open markets, but the pay is generally going to be half of what you’ll get in East Asia. You’ll always make well above the CoL though, wherever you teach, and there are always lots of jobs to pick from, so if you have a preferred country it’ll still be a great time just living abroad in general.
I was just looking at jobs in Panama, and there’s a beachside town an hour away from the city offering $1100 a month for those same hours and benefits, although they do throw in free housing.
more general points.
you really are helping the students. at this moment in history, english is in demand for students, business and socializing in general, and by learning english they are afforded more real opportunities, so it’s a rewarding job in that sense.
every month you teach is a huge boon in terms of experience. if you ever want to go back to teaching and you have any amount of experience, you’ll be offered higher pay and better benefits.
A corollary is that once you teach, you’ll always have that job available. Want money but don’t want to work much? ESL. Need to save up capital or pay off debt back home? ESL. Want to offset all of your globetrotting habits? ESL. Most financial difficulties are fundamentally off the table if you’re an English teacher.
you’ll have so much free time that you can focus on your hobbies and interests, which was a huge part of me enjoying my time abroad, living my actual life.
us could have this too, if you had strong unions among other things.
You mean communism?
Edit: /s because it seems it wasnt obvious enough
Looking around at the current political environment, I’ll take a little of that Communism, or at least the Socialist flavor.
Jesus fucking christ. How is an union communist? Lol do unions advocate that all workers should be equally owners? Do you even know what a union or communism is? What a stupid brainwashing shit have you guys been suffering?
Wow chill I was being sarcastic. Thought it was obvious enough but seems Lemmy isnt so different from reddit after all, the /s is always needed.
With so many pro-far left here it’s pretty logical we thought you were serious
My comment was meant to mimic right-wing talking points which exaggerate social democratic ideas as as if they were extremist viewpoints. Guess it wasnt as clear as I imagined it in my head.
many might get annoyed about mentioning those talking points, even if its obviously not serious. I’m not accusing you of anything or anything like that, but by even mentioning it also perpetuates the “meme” those rightwing assholes have been manufacturing. So its kind of same thing as why you shouldn’t use derogatory terms even as joke or ironically -> it keeps them alive in collective consciousness.
The whole communism = bad and anything even slightly left = communism is deliberate effort to demonize anything that might help america’s working class and breaking the grip the rich have on the country. Or if it supposedly isn’t, it’s suspiciously too effective way to achieve exactly that.
I’ve noticed that too. A bunch of people on here act all high and mighty, feeling their better that those lowly reddit users, but from my experience the people are really not that different. Maybe a higher percentage of linux users and star trek fans for some reason. I suspect the intersection of the two is quite large.
If you go through your day and meet one asshole, they were an asshole. If you go through your day and keep meeting assholes…
…maybe instead of expecting the world to get more i tune with your sense of humor, the person who needs to make the adjustment is you. The Internet is made of strangers who can’t hear your tone of voice or see your tongue-in-cheek expression. Poe’s Law basically defines the Internet.
The US Labor Laws are complete shit. Period!
Sorry, my US Friends. We’re just too left on working issues, mostly.
They don’t understand what you said, you should have used the word woke
Fucking communist europe, respecting women a tiny little bit more than not at all.
When USA is closer to the African/middle east countries they hate than Europe
As an aside, it’s always both a bit funny and bewildering how even the more reputable American media talk about Europe as if it were just one thing, so that, for instance, this article specifies it to Austria only several paragraphs into the text.
It sort of makes sense - in many ways the EU is more like the USA than any one individual European country is. American states have a similar variety of laws, and are quite culturally variable too (certainly much more homogenous than European cultures though).
What? Europe isn’t a country?
Not yet. Seeing as things are going with the rise of the far right, probably not for quite a while.
Perks? You mean the way of life?
Perks (US En) = basic (and not even always functioning) labour protection
Archive link: https://archive.is/tiaLg
Forgot, sorry.
The funny thing is that if you live in Europe and work for a US company, you also get the European perks. I really don’t understand why more Americans don’t move here
I hope she finds the strength to leave the US and find a job and home outside of the US. The jobs in the USA are mostly exploitative - not surprising with the labor laws as weak as they are.
Fucking immigrants from third world countries taking our jobs /s
removed by mod
Imagine if you landed a job in Europe from a European company. You’d definitely not be able to go back
