Hey everyone, I know I owe you all a post about Amsterdam, but this is an important issue that I want to spread the word about. I don't have the best things to say about the program I work for, I just lucked out by getting placed in a fantastic school that looks out for me when issues like this come up. A lot of people in my program are not getting paid even though we come here with student visas that do not allow us to find other work legally. Liz, a fellow auxiliar living in Logroño, La Rioja, has written a post about how we are quickly approaching the holidays and she still has not been paid for the last three months of work she's done.
"As most of you already know, I am in Spain on a teaching grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education called Auxiliares de Conversación or English Language and Culture Assistants. I wrote this long blog post last March with my thoughts on the program. So much has changed since then, and now I am going to tell you what I really think. I would say about 95% of people who do this program do it because they want to live in Spain. Not because they want to be teachers, not because they want teaching experience, not to help little children learn about English language and culture. Sure, that may be part of it, but I bet you the main reason is because they want to live in Spain, and it's one of the only ways to live legally in Spain as an American. And you know what? The Spanish government takes FULL advantage of that.Our contract says that we are to work 12 hours a week and be paid 700 euros a month as a stipend from October 1 to May 31. Really awesome, right? The program also tells us that we should come with about $1000 saved up to live off of for the first month until we get paid at the end of the first month, around November 1. However, it is almost Christmas and many of the auxiliares around Spain have still not been paid. The program has been around for years, and yet, this issue comes up every year. Not with every region, but for many. Last year in Andalucía, my school just paid me every month and then kept the checks when they finally arrived from the government, but after all the budget cuts going on, few schools are willing to do this. After so many years, how can the Ministry of Education still be so disorganized?
Thousands of foreigners come to Spain every year with this scholarship, it is not a small group of people who is affected. And thousands more apply and don't even get a spot. This program has become extremely popular, especially in the States as an ideal post-college pre-real world second study-abroad opportunity. The Ministry of Education knows this and knows how much we want to be here, and I think they take advantage of that by making us put up with a lot of bureaucratic bull****, knowing that we can't and won't do anything about. Not getting paid for 3 months? It's not like we'll stop working and go home. We can't even afford a flight since we've used all our savings to live off of. Want to complain to someone about it? The majority of government don't answer their phones or emails. Ever."
Read the rest of Liz's post at her blog, Memoirs of a Young Adventuress.
What do you guys think? I've been lucky that my school can afford to pay me and the other assistant out of pocket while they wait for the government to reimburse them, but the fact is that they just should not have to do that. We'll see what happens...