TEFL Worker’s Union

The union for all of London’s language teachers, receptionists, admin staff, interns, and anyone else who works in a language school!

TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

We love our jobs, we love our students, and we love our colleagues. We don’t like struggling to pay the bills, dealing with insecure employment or being treated as if we’re disposable.

For far too long the TEFL industry has been powered by workers on zero-hours contracts, expected to work more hours than they are paid for, and all for little more than a pittance.

We want to change that! We believe that all workers in language schools deserve permanent contracts, paid sick days, paid planning time, meetings and training sessions, and a living wage that is enough to pay a mortgage or start a family.

We have already been successful in challenging a number of schools on bad working conditions including securing workers’ right to holiday pay, winning compensation for bogus ‘training’ classes, challenging the misclassification of teacher as ‘self-employed’, winning payouts for unfairly dismissed teachers and admin staff, securing unpaid wages when a school closed down, and helping negotiate significant contract improvements.

We represent all workers in language school workers, whether that be teachers, admin staff, interns or cleaners, we are here to help.