How much is a fair wage?

By Laurie Whiteside

A while back some of us in EFLTU were discussing how much would be a reasonable hourly rate to charge, either as a freelance or language school employee. It quickly became clear that a lot depends on where you live; a reasonable living wage in Poland or the Czech Republic would not go far in France Germany, for example. To complicate matters further, while many of us charge, or are paid, by the taught hour, there is no agreement on how many hours constitutes a typical year for an EFL teacher.

In order to give language teachers some idea, I devised the table available here in Word format or here in pdf format. Basically it takes the GNI per capita (i.e. average income) of 29 different European countries and shows how much you would have to be paid, per hour, to earn that figure for a given number of hours. For example, according to the table, a teacher in the Czech Republic who works 1,000 hours in a year needs to be paid $6.74, or €5.39 per hour to earn an average income, while the same teacher in Germany, working the same hours, needs $25.25, or €20.20.

Things are never quite so straightforward, however, so here are the caveats you need to bear in mind when using the table:

  1. The GNI figures came from the country profiles on the BBC website. These come from the World Bank and date from 2003 (the most up to date figures available at the time of writing). So, the figures for today could be a bit higher.
  2. GNI per capita is calculated by dividing a country’s “income” (i.e. the value of wealth created that year) by the entire population – including the economically inactive such as children and unemployed people. So, when the GNI per capita of Estonia is quoted as $4960, someone on a typical wage would earn more than that in a year. Nevertheless, the figure should give you some indication of how much is enough to live on where you work.
  3. The World Bank figures are in US Dollars. I’ve assumed a rate of $1 = €0.80, but this could change in the future. You may need to re-jig the figures if the exchange rate changes massively.
  4. As we are talking an average for the whole country, the table doesn’t allow for regional variations. If you work in the capital, for example, the cost of living may well be above average and you’ll need an above average salary to live comfortably.
  5. The rate is gross and takes no account of things like employer insurance or pension contributions. That doesn’t matter if you are self-employed and have to pay all these things yourself. If you work for a school in France or Germany, where employer costs are high, your employer could be making payments on your behalf, which you don’t see. For example, pension contributions are really deferred wages which you receive when you retire, and you see the benefit of the insurance your employer pays when you fall ill and need a prescription. So, if you have an honest employer who declares all your wages, your take home pay could well be lower than what the table says. If in doubt, check what additional payments your employer makes on your behalf; it’s worth doing this anyway to avoid any nasty shocks should you ever need to claim social security benefits.

So, with these factors in mind, take a look at the table and to see how your pay relates to others in your country. Then go and ask for a raise. If you don’t think you’ll get one, join a union and bargain collectively!

If your country isn’t mentioned in the table, you can find out the local GNI per capita by going to http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/GNIPC.pdf (needs Acrobat) or by looking at the country profiles on the BBC website www.bbc.co.uk.

 

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