Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money

Over the past week a few things about our relationship with CSETC have become obvious to me, and none of them are good. I have engaged CSETC in a battle over my contract, one that if I was back home wouldn't even be a question. Vang had her wallet stolen on the bus, and CSETC's response and the circumstances surrounding it say an incredible amount about CSETC as an organization. To say that I'm frustrated with things here would be an understatement.

The contract situation is cut and dry. It is written in my contract that if I am not paid on time, the contract is breached, and I am entitled to three months salary and freedom from the contract. We are supposed to be paid on the tenth of each month, and that day came and went, and I was willing to let it slide because Margo was in Beijing. We had a meeting with her on the 14^th, and the question of payment came up, among other things. Her response was “Maybe tomorrow, I'll bring it up at my meeting with the headmaster.” This was completely unacceptable. And so, angry with rage, I went back to my room, and drafted up this letter:

“Irene and Annie,

I'm writing you today to tell you that those of us here in Jiangxi have not been paid in time, and according to section 4.2.2 b in our contracts, this constitutes a formal breach of contract, as we have not been paid on time in any way. I'm not looking for the situation to be resolved, I'm looking to obtain the breach penalty (3 months salary and cancellation) as defined in section 4.4. This is a clear cut case, as it was not an unpredictable or unavoidable situation. I will be awaiting your response.

Cooper”

Later that night, I received this response:

“Cooper,

I have read your email and had contacted with the school, they said they will do it as soon as possible. While you stay there you are a member of the program and the team, I hope you could give more understand to your team members.

Irene”

This might be the most insulting letter I've ever received. Was I angry when I got it? You bet! But I've decided that the one thing that I have to do with this situation is to keep my cool, and to maintain the cold, legal tone that an argument about a contract deserves. So, with some help by Grant Gibeau, I drafted this:

“Irene,

I'm not sure you understand the concerns I'm trying to voice. The terms governing our relationship are defined by the contract CSETC and I both entered into, it is not a place where compromise happens, it is a place where its terms dictate the results. I have not been paid on time, and the consequences of this are clearly stated in the contract. I am simply asking for the things that I am entitled to within the legal framework that you have created and I have agreed to. The results of not being paid are plain and simple, and I am simply looking to get what I am entitled to as an employee of CSETC. To reiterate, section 4.2.2b in our contracts says that we will be paid the agreed amount on time. This has not happened, and because of this section 4.4 entitles me to freedom from this contract and three months salary.

-Cooper”

I haven't received a response, but I've already started drafting a response in my head. Those two sentences said a lot about their stance toward the contract. They don't respect it, and they refuse to uphold it, so if anything I walk away from this fight with the knowledge that the contract doesn't actually matter, and I can largely do what I want. If they don't respect it, why should I? It also gets at something that I've thought was true for a while: they don't actually respect us as employees. They don't see us as people doing a job, they think of us as a bunch of naive kids on some kind of school program. We're continually talked down to, and any legitimate complaints that we have are swept under the rug. Vang's situation yesterday illustrates this quite well.

Margo invited Vang and Kao to her gym yesterday, and Vang arrived to discover that the gym was under construction, and anything that she wanted to do was impossible, and Margo had to go do some damn thing, so they had to take the bus back. Somewhere on the trip someone got into her purse and stole her wallet, which had her ATM card and her PIN number in it. She discovered this, and promptly freaked, as any of us would do. They called CSETC for help, because CSETC opened all of our bank cards, and would know what to do.

Now, this next part requires some back story. Vang went to SCSU, and is the first person from SCSU to come over through CSETC. When Vang called Annie, she got the response that they were too busy, and they would deal with the issue “in a few days”. Now, what were they too busy with? Well, as it turns out, there were a couple people from SCSU that had come over to establish this as a regular program, and CSETC was too busy to deal with the pressing issue of its only employee to have graduated from SCSU because they were trying to impress the delegates into providing them with more Americans they can profit from.

Irene likes to talk about how we're engaging in cultural exchange, and I'm not sure if anyone's buying that anymore. Whenever we encounter something inconvenient or frustrating, it's cultural exchange, and we should be happy that we're getting to experience it. Whenever they're met with American cultural norms like respect for a contract, punctuality in a crisis, or general safety (Melissa caught some kids trying to climb into her window in Beijing, more on that as it develops) they have proven time and time again that they are unwilling to engage in any sort of exchange. They are unfit to run the kind of program that they are trying to run, and when I get back, I'm going to try to talk as many people out of participating in the program as possible.

-Cooper