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Section with Paul Walsh

You can follow Paul on Twitter as well as the Teachers as Workers SIG (TAWSIG).

The TAWSIG website is here; you can join the mailing list or even submit a piece for publication.

To build bridges between English language teachers in Spain and teachers of Spanish as a foreign language (ELE: Español como Lengua Extranjera), we also recommend following ProfesiónELE on Twitter and checking out their website (in Spanish).

Some key pieces by Paul around the topics we chatted about include:

• IATEFL calling! (from Paul’s blog Decentralised Teaching & Learning)
• Key Concepts in ELT: Precarity (ELTJ)
• 10 things I learned about precarity (TAWSIG)
• Berlin: Precarious but not so sexy (Open Democracy)
• Life’s a pitch (Open Democracy)
• What ‘lemonade-gate’ says about our society (Open Democracy)

Here’s the trailer for Two Days, One Night, directed by the Dardenne brothers:

The trailer and more information about the Call Me Intern documentary can be seen here, and the documentary about precarious conditions in the CGI/VFX industry, Hollywood’s Greatest Trick, is here. Other films on precarity that Paul recommends include Sorry We Missed You (2019) and Rosie (2018).

Section with James Venner and Alice Copello of SLB

The full results of James and Melanie Brennan’s survey on Barcelona ELT working conditions is here, and there’s a short summary of key points here. The BTTA Facebook group, on which Alice is an admin, can be found here.

The blogpost we mention by Myles Klynhout is Teacher isolation – Where can support be found for ELT’s?

The main unions for teachers in Catalonia and Spain are Comisiones Obreras or CCOO (educació no reglada), Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), and the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo (CNT). Any one of these unions will provide legal advice for a minimal fee, or free advice to paid-up members.

The new conveni for workers in the unregulated education sector in Catalonia, effective as of January 2020, can be consulted here (in Catalan). We hope to have this translated in the near future and we’ll be offering further guides to workers’ rights, as part of Alice’s project linking SLB and CCOO. Please contact us if you’d like to offer any assistance with this.

Finally, here’s the full version of the Strawbs’ ‘Part of the Union’ to play us out.