* I was notified recently by my ex-colleagues of how the management has been writing propaganda for how great this workplace is. Seeing all these propaganda makes me angry, and I feel I have a moral obligation to speak out.
* A while ago, this company laid off several of academic subject tutors (IB, IGCSE, etc.), giving the reason that we do not have high enough number of teaching hours.
* The fact is that teachers have no control over how many teaching hours they do. It’s a matter of how many students enrol for your subjects and how well the company is marketed.
* It was incredibly frustrating because most of us came to Hong Kong specifically for this job, and for example had year-long rental commitments towards landlord. But we were asked to leave the company within a few months’ time. We could not stay in Hong Kong without a job as per working visa conditions.
* Colleagues who used to be smiling all the time were visibly distressed in their final days and some of them were seen to shed tears during down time.
* After other colleagues found out what happened, management set up meetings with them to damage-control. In the meetings, they blamed us for “choosing” not to stay at The Edge (the supposed “choice” was between a $0 base salary paid-per-teaching-hour contract and leaving the company). The no-base-salary “choice” would not earn us enough, obviously, given the poor sales.
* Some of my friends were actively involved in labour rights issues. They asked management a lot of questions regarding these incidents, which led management to burst into anger and yell at them. Clearly, concern and compassion for other colleagues are not encouraged here.
* We also got hold of some back-and-forth chat messages between my colleagues and the HR Department. I was revolted to see that the HR Department pulled the victim card and bad-mouthed some of those who they fired, accusing them of yelling at HR person on her annual leave. The accusation was supposed to be a “defence” for the company’s decision. Firing people for illegitimate reasons is already bad enough, gossiping and bad-mouthing them to justify your actions are morally repugnant.
* Throughout this unpleasant communication, the management kept reiterating that they are not “evil”. The fact is that no one accused them of being evil and, from what I gather, no one even used any moralistic terms. They were simply asking sensible, factual questions such as how are the laid off colleagues, where are they now, are they OK, and so on, which is only natural given the shocking realisation that people you worked with for months are now suddenly gone.
* It was discovered that management was spying on our company Gmail chat conversations for surveillance purposes to identify people who kept talking about these incidents and to silence them through threats in private 1-on-1 meetings.
* During this time, we constantly heard our names mentioned by the front desk staff while they were loudly gossiping about us in Cantonese. It was very unsettling.
* We were told not to say goodbye to colleagues on our last day. They want us to just disappear.
* I was later informed by some friends who were not laid off that over several company meetings the company stated that they are re-evaluating the viability of academic subjects tutoring. The fact is that this company is not very competitive when it comes to IB, AP, IGCSE, A-Levels, etc subjects. I urge you to apply elsewhere if you are planning to do these subjects. I do not understand why they would keep hiring and asking people to fly to Hong Kong specifically for this job when they cannot support that many staff.
* For the record, a friend who arrived HK at around the same time but worked at an adjacent tutorial centre is still working there. Look elsewhere for stability and much less frustration.
