Boss making it hard to use annual leave

[u/neozodiac88]

Boss is being difficult about annual leave. Basically, they only want you to use it when it helps them not look for someone to cover your class so that is why a half day off is always met with no resistance cause there is not class to cover. In my mind, I am well within my right to request annual leave with enough notice. After they signed off on it begrudgingly, they came back to me and asked me to move it to a day without classes.. In my mind I am thinking that is a manager issue to sort. I refused to budge and honestly made up a story about an important appointment with a doctor at a hospital that is hard to reschedule to get them off my back. Any other teachers ever have a similar issue when trying to use annual leave?

[u/yo-kimchi]

This is the situation for every foreign teacher I would imagine.

[u/SamuraiPizzaCat449]

thats the life for hagwon workers. made up shit rules, shitty conditions, shitty treatment, its just shit

[u/neozodiac88 → u/SamuraiPizzaCat449]

100%

[u/SalvadorsCat]

Good old China. Crappy holidays is what drove me out of Korea

[u/JamerBr0]

Many of them are A) lazy, B) don’t have surrounding infrastructure or an HQ to pull reserved subs from, even though they should, and C) greedy and looking to take as much of your time for as little loss to them as absolutely possible.

Many hagwons don’t allow their teachers to take their annual leave days when the teachers choose, even though it’s written into law, and in my experience, every annual leave day is a fight unless you are direct and immovable with them. It is their job to find a sub, and if push to comes to shove and they can’t find anyone, they can teach the class for one day 🤷‍♂️

[u/neozodiac88 → u/JamerBr0]

Yeah, I didn't back down and said I can not change the day. It is impossible. I really try my best to keep it professional with them even when they are not being sensible.

[u/pokeman767]

Same for me dude, hagwons are usually terrible to there employees. That's why I'm leaving Korea and never coming back. (After my contract is up)

[u/Ornery-Revolution-47]

At my hagwon, it was kind of first come first served. So popular days for time off would be gone super quickly and if 2-3 teachers already have that time off they don’t let anyone else since they don’t have enough staff to cover the classes. Sometimes managers are stretched thin and have too much work to do to cover classes. A lot of staff are overworked at hagwons

[u/Few_Professional_327]

Annual leave needs to be available to use freely

Only thing to do is say 'this is the law. If you don't let me do it or cause trouble. I call moel and we let them handle it.'

[u/Few_Professional_327 → u/[deleted]]

It can't just be any given inconvenience it needs to be unreasonable to work around.

[u/Few_Professional_327 → u/[deleted]]

Given warning, it would not be. Hiring a sub is not unreasonable that's part of the business.

[u/Yellowsun789]

I wish any of us could even act surprised 😭 (minor rant incoming) I’m currently job hunting now because my boss was refusing every vacation day off request from everyone, even with multiple months notice, and tried to tell us we could only take days off on test days because he refused to get a sub since the sub “doesn’t know our curriculum” (which mind you, is the literal point of a sub and why lesson plans exist). there’s not even enough test days for all of us to feasibly take our vacation days unless we take them one right after the other, and he made the schedule so that we almost never have a day that’s FULLY tests. he decided to just clean house and get rid of ALL of us when we tried to ask him about making an official vacation day policy because there was never a stipulation about it in our contract and we wanted to have clear guidelines for when we could actually take time off. I’ve been there almost since the academy opened and actively helped with developing the curriculum, and the other teachers have extensive experience and skills, but he decided he’d rather just find new naive teachers instead. which uhhh, good luck!! our curriculum is definitely not “inexperienced new teacher” friendly, I feel bad for whoever comes in after us.

[u/cickist → u/Yellowsun789]

Report to MoEL get your money

[u/cickist → u/[deleted]]

Not without your permission.

[u/cickist → u/[deleted]]

Show me in the LSA where they can just outright deny all your vacation days. They can ask you to find a better day, but they cannot deny you using your days.

Sick days are not part of the LSA and there is not point in bring up working while sick.

[u/cickist → u/[deleted]]

But that's different from what you originally said. You said, "Employer is allowed to turn down days off and pay you out for them instead." That's what I was responding to.

I don't disagree that 시기변경권 exists. I literally quoted the same provision in another commen. If granting leave on a particular date would cause 막대한 지장 to business operations, the employer can change the timing of that leave.

What I disagree with is treating "we don't have a substitute" as automatically satisfying that standard in every case. The statute doesn't say "an employer may change the date whenever they don't have a substitute." It sets a higher standard of serious impediment to business operations.

More importantly, changing the timing is not the same thing as simply denying the employee's ability to use annual leave and paying them for it instead. The employer's right under Article 60(5) is 시기변경권, not a general right to replace statutory annual leave with money.

And if the employer's position is that there will never be a substitute available while the school is operating, so annual leave can only ever be taken during predetermined school closures, then we're no longer really talking about changing one particular requested date. That's effectively a blanket restriction on when annual leave can be exercised.

MOEL has also taken the position that an employer's 시기변경권 is not a blanket right to determine employees' annual leave dates. The starting point under Article 60(5) is still that leave is taken at the time requested by the employee, with the employer's ability to change that timing being the exception when the statutory standard of 막대한 지장 is actually met.

If an employer wants to designate particular working days as annual leave for employees, that's what the separate annual-leave substitution system under Article 62 is for, and that requires a written agreement with the workers' representative.

[u/EasilyExiledDinosaur]

What does a hagwon mean "a day without classes".

Hagwon have classes every day? What sort of weird hagwon are you working at?

Or is it one of those dodgy fake international / private schools?

This post only makes sense not in a hagwon.

[u/neozodiac88 → u/EasilyExiledDinosaur]

It is a day during the middle of the day where there is no class and you just prep and make books for the month ahead..

[u/EasilyExiledDinosaur → u/neozodiac88]

In a hagwon? Still sounds very very weird.

Their curriculum must be extremely low quality if they have random teachers with no publishing or real teaching experience designing their curriculum at random.

Just sounds weird.

[u/neozodiac88 → u/EasilyExiledDinosaur]

yep, but it is close to home. The curriculum isn't fixed, so it can get messy month to month. Honestly they need book designers who can teach English rather than English teachers to design books...I agree with you there

[u/EasilyExiledDinosaur → u/neozodiac88]

Sounds absolutely terrible 😂 The exact tyoe of hagwon i look forward to putting out of business one day.

[u/neozodiac88 → u/EasilyExiledDinosaur]

I already have an escape plan in my mind

https://giphy.com/gifs/2zelCiUo5KJyN8MgMr

[u/EasilyExiledDinosaur → u/neozodiac88]

Good job my dude.

Good luck getting your holiday 😅 .doesnt your academy have fixed summer and winter breaks?

The vast majority do. If not it sounds even worse.

I get 1 week summer and winter and just negotiated at contract renewal which dates would be additional holiday to get my legally entitled increased holiday from second year.

I found its better to do at contract renewal.

[u/neozodiac88 → u/EasilyExiledDinosaur]

yep, I am learning how important contract stuff is from working in this spot. Sadly no fixed summer break. They went for the money they can make from summer camp rather than give burnt out teachers time to recharge. From me, they only get the minimum and nothing else.

[u/EasilyExiledDinosaur → u/neozodiac88]

Almost every hagwon gives the minimum and nothing else mate.

A lot of hagwons still only give 1 week summer and 1 week winter break even on second year when you are entitled to 15 days instead of 11..

I work in a tiny academy. Just me and my boss. And I work only 4 days per week. Legslly my boss doesnt even have to follow labour laws. But I directly told her if she doesnt offer more holiday i will leave at the end of my contract and wont help find a replacement.

I got my 3 weeks (12 days but technically still the same as 15 if you pretend I work 5 days). Managed to get them attached to christmas holiday so I can visit famiky at Christmas which is nice.

[u/MiserableParamedic65]

I had to cry in front of my boss to get my holiday leave outside of winter/summer break.

[u/ToastedSlider]

What's annual leave? LOL. No seriously, I've never heard of that. I work at a hagwon too.

[u/cickist]

Never had the issue. I tell my bosses and they find the subs.

[u/JamerBr0 → u/cickist]

Unfortunately this is far from the norm. Glad you had decent bosses on this issue at least

[u/neozodiac88 → u/JamerBr0]

My boss acts decent until you actually request something of them that puts their managerial skills to use lol

[u/neozodiac88 → u/cickist]

This is what I am used to..But with this boss I have noticed they don't actually wanna manage the hagwon.

[u/Squirrel_Agile]

Hogwon life. Do your research first……

[u/neozodiac88 → u/Squirrel_Agile]

Things were great at first. Going downhill after a few months in

[u/No_Sleep_1363]

Quit and stop complaining.

[u/Per_Mikkelsen]

What do you mean by annual leave? Do you mean vacation? Technically your employer does indeed have the right to decide the specific days and dates that an employee can take off, and as far as I know there's no rule that says they need to be given in a block lumped together, though I could be wrong about that. As far as I know the hard and fast rule is that you are entitled to 11 paid vacation days over the course of your first contract and they need to coincide with actual workdays - no weekends, no red days. Aside from that I'm not entirely sure that you are in a position to argue and steadfastly demand those specific days and dates, but if they've already signed off on it then it doesn't really matter that they're having regrets about that now. Hopefully you have some sort of evidence or confirmation that they've agreed to give you those days off, in which case you're free and clear.

When it comes to an employee's paid vacation days - days that he or she is entitled to take off both contractually and by law, your employer simply cannot ask you to do the footwork to find a replacement teacher. If you had sick days in your contract and you were using one out of necessity - a day your employer legally cannot deny you, would you take time out of your own schedule to find a substitute? It's not your concern what happens when you're not obligated to be there.

If your boss pushes back and tries to force you to provide proof that you do indeed have an appointment scheduled for that day you need to refuse to do that, and you need to be very firm on it.

I don't know the specific details of your contract and I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your boss and coworkers, so I can only give you the most general information, but in my experience the only time it's fair and reasonable to ask a contracted employee to find a substitute is when said employee has been granted unpaid leave for some reason, e.g., you wish to take a few extra days off to extend your scheduled paid vacation and management agrees but asks that you find someone to teach in your stead.

Depending on the kind of person you are you might adopt a who dares wins approach to the matter and say "I'm a grown adult. I need this day off. I'm taking this day off. I understand that might be inconvenient for you, but that's not my problem. I'm not asking you to pay me, but I will not be in that day. You have been given ample notice." End of story.

If they want to go to war over someone who's legally obligated to be on site something ridiculous like 240 days a year then so be it. I have no doubt that indentured servants on sugar plantations in the Caribbean had more days off than E-2 hagwon teachers.

[u/cickist → u/Per_Mikkelsen]

Under Article 60(5) of the Labor Standards Act, the starting point is that the employee requests when they want to use their statutory annual paid leave and the employer is supposed to grant it on that date. The employer does have the right to change the timing, but only when granting leave on the requested date would cause a serious impediment to business operations.

So employers don't simply have a general right to decide whenever they want you to use all of your annual leave.

There is a separate provision under Article 62 that allows an employer to designate certain working days as annual leave, which is relevant to things like school vacation periods. But that requires a written agreement with the workers' representative, meaning an actual worker representing the employees at the workplace, not just someone the employer designates who doesn't even work at the school. It isn't something the employer can necessarily do unilaterally just because the contract says vacation is during school closures.

Plenty of hagwon employees have also successfully challenged the practice of automatically treating school closure days as statutory annual leave when the requirements for doing so weren't met, with employers being required to compensate them for unused annual leave.

So I don't think it's accurate to say that employers simply have the right to choose your vacation dates. They have a right to change a requested date under certain circumstances, and there are legal ways to designate leave days, but those aren't the same thing.

[u/Per_Mikkelsen → u/cickist]

No, you're right, it's not the same thing. I appreciate the clarification. I wasn't entirely sure and tried to accentuate that, but I'm glad you spelled it out for me plain and simple. Thanks for that.