British yoga teachers have decided to fight against extreme flexibility. On Thursday February 4, they formed a branch of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IGWG). This is a first in the UK, and only the second such union branch in the world, after Unionize Yoga in New York.
For the most part technically unemployed because of the Covid-19, but not benefiting from partial unemployment due to a lack of an employment contract, yoga teachers currently suffer from a high degree of insecurity. Their profession is symbolic of the status of these new autoentrepreneurs, who have almost no social safety net. Only 4% of them are officially employees, according to a study carried out by this new union branch, and 19% have a written contract in one form or another. On average, 60% of them earn less than 11 euros an hour.
Laura Hancock, 38, a yoga teacher in Oxford, central England, who chairs this new union branch, tried in 2018 to rebel against the center which used its services. “I didn’t have a contract, everything was done orally. At one point, they didn’t pay me for seven weeks. When I protested, they told me it was not worth coming back. That’s when I said to myself that we had to get organized. “
Paid in vouchers
Simran Uppal tried to make a living from yoga, his passion. “I worked days that could last up to 16 hours, including trips. But it barely allowed me to pay my rent. “ After months at this rate, he ended up physically cracking up, resulting in months of hiatus. “When you work for a gym, you have to prepare the room where you teach, try to recruit students, put away the equipment… An hour of class generally takes two hours, but you only get paid one hour. “ In the worst case, Mme Hancock talks about yoga teachers paid in vouchers for sportswear.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, it has benefited from aid paid to autoentrepreneurs, which amounts to 70% of the average income for the previous three years. But Mr. Uppal, 25, is not entitled to it because he has not been self-employed for the required three years. “We are not bonzes protected by an ashram [un monastère indien] “, he protests.
