Breaking a Contract

You are not the first person to have found themselves in this situation. And this is why these places advertise overseas.


By law (Employment Ordnance) an employment contract should stipulate the length of notice required to terminate the contract. If, as you say, the contract is unclear you can approach the Labour Department for assistance - your employer won't know about this unless there is a dispute to follow up, etc. But I think you will be looking at not less than one month's notice.


BTW, they are not allowed to dock your pay for sick leave. Paid sickness days are accumulated at the rate of two paid sickness days for each completed month of employment during the first 12 months of employment, and four paid sickness days for each completed month of employment thereafter. Sickness allowance is a sum equivalent to four-fifths of the normal wages that employees would have earned if they had worked. It's a HK$50,000 if found out they are doing this.


Your employer is relying on your ignorance of the law - they probably have been getting away with this for some time! If you are certain about the new position - and the potential employer is okay to sponsor your work visa - you can resign from your current position. Yes, your current employer will be ticked off. They can ask you to leave immediately, but then must pay you wages in lieu of notice.


Get everything in writing. Sign nothing unless you have proper advice. If you think there might be trouble, record conversations or get the Labour Dept involved - it has (free) arbitration services.


Oh, and don't let anyone at your current employer know where you will be working. HK is a small place and your current employer sounds like it could be vindictive and could start spreading those rumours outside the school.

If the school were able to find out information through the labour department the you can be as sure as hell the ICAC would get involved.


Don't worry the labour dept are there to help, go to them and you will find them very good to deal with.

All information passed to the Labour Department should be confidential. Of course, there is no guarantee - people are people. But that is why we have the ICAC - Independent Commission Against Corruption. If you believe information has filtered from the LD back to the school, you go to the ICAC.


Resigning is usually better than getting fired; that could easily follow you around. But you know the situation best and sometimes a speedy exit is required.


I don't understand what you mean about paying money. Can you explain? Or did you sign a bizarre kind of Faustian contract?

I had a similar situation with an international school (they definately WERE an international school), but had a funny way of running things where by no organisational structure was applied at all.

I ended up paying my way out by opting to leave asap & didn't mention anything to my new employer.

Hope things work out for you :)

Not a nice situation to be in but as someone else said it's not the first time someone has been taken for a ride and in need to break a contract.

Checking these so called 'International Schools' out is important.

BTW how do you contact the Labour Department in case I should ever need them?