Teachers at Beijing BISS International School (BISS) have been on strike the past week over unpaid wages amounting to as much as 120,000 yuan ($23,873).
BISS, a Singapore-run school in China, is allegedly facing financial difficulty and was closed from 21 to 25 September following the strike for “internal business reasons”.
The school sent a WeChat message to parents on 20 September informing them of the closure and that the office staff would be working with the owner of BISS to “bring stability to the financial challenges that the school is facing”.
BISS is one of Beijing’s most expensive schools, with fees costing upwards of 200,000 yuan ($39,887) a year. It is listed as part of Singapore-based ISS Education Group and has under 200 students.
The school has facilities such as a sealed dome where students can exercise away from the city’s smog. However, some teachers shared that the school has been facing a resourcing issue in recent years. Most of them had left in July after their contracts ended.
“I went three months without pencils and we would have to bring our own toilet paper,” said Kelly McBride, a former teacher at BISS. She had taught there from 2016 until last July, adding that the school owes her about 60,000 yuan ($11,966).
Another teacher, Nicole Son-Culbreth shared how her salary was delayed for almost 1.5months late at times. She claimed BISS owes her about 121,000 yuan ($24,125) in wages and allowance.
“We were under a lot of stress, the entire time we were going to work every day because we cared about the school and the students, and were concerned about fulfilling our professional obligations,” she said.
Teachers were told by the head of the school, Randy Eplin, and owners that the school was working on payments, but Son-Culbreth said these “never came”.
Some teachers have filed complaints with the city’s Labour Bureau but they have not resulted in any payments, reported The Straits Times.
Teachers have sent parents a letter, saying they did not intend to cause “chaos or malpractice” but it was difficult to provide “high standard teaching levels” under such conditions.
They explained that they had issued an ultimatum to the school’s owners and board for their wages, housing allowance and health insurance to be paid, warning that they could go on strike if payments were not made.
The letter added the following: “Faculty contracts have not been honoured, and our continued patience and faith that ownership and the school board will remedy this breach of contract has been met with inaction and virtual silence. No solution is imminent.”