04/04/2020
Dear students and colleagues!
We have decided not to work with Urban Sports Club platform anymore and we would like to share with you this public statement created by a group of like-minded fellow teachers.
As some of you know, the relationship between yoga teachers and studios and Urban Sports Club has long been a complicated one. On the one hand, USC brings a massive marketing platform, visibility to many new students, and offers our services at a price far lower than direct studio pricing. On the other hand, that platform means USC holds ever greater control over our relationship with our students, and that pricing means that it has become ever more difficult for many teachers to earn a living wage, or studios to meet their costs, while offering yoga. In addition, there’s been an ongoing lack of transparency or equity in the payments they offer to different teachers and studios, and all our attempts to discuss this with USC have been met with no engagement or change.
We all know that the Coronavirus crisis has endangered many small businesses and independent workers, and of course as teachers whose livelihood has centered on being physically present with our students, our work has been directly affected or even wiped out completely. The shift to online teaching has been swift and not without challenges. Unfortunately, USC has now used its great power to exploit this situation and worsen our circumstances. As a community of yoga practitioners, we wanted to make our students aware of USC’s actions and their negative impact.
**USC rolled out brand-new terms of agreement with their studio teaching partners in exchange for promoting our online classes and permitting USC memberships to be used for them. These terms involved:
- A radical reduction of pay rate per student, in some cases up to 50% – when the previously existing rate was already low enough to threaten many teachers’ survival
- A limit on how much can be earned in total per month via USC, regardless of how many signups / students attend classes – meaning that teachers are not being paid for their work
- A limit on how much can be earned per student per month via USC, regardless of how many times the student attends class – again, meaning more money to USC and less to teachers
- Required use of a new online check-in system, removal of manual check-in access – meaning that no USC payments may be applied for recorded / downloadable classes
- Required duplicate sign-in on the students’ part, wherein payment is dependent on the student confirming check-in via a link on their end – if the student does not complete this additional check-in, the teacher receives no payment
- Required “minimum attendance” where class participation is tracked, and students not participating fully (tracking method unknown?) will not be paid out to the teacher
Not only was there a lack of transparency in providing these terms, but in some cases these terms were also applied retroactively, ie, before or without teachers’ / studios’ knowledge or consent, which may also be illegal.**
The CV crisis is asking us to explore many facets of our daily life: Who we connect to, how we uphold health and stability for our minds and bodies, what we value. If you value your yoga practice, we ask you to consider the impact of USC’s actions and consider other forms of enrolment that support us to keep offering our services to you fairly, equitably and free of the manipulations of disaster capitalism. We are working together as a group to come up with alternatives we believe will offer you similar opportunities to support your practice and the community in the longer term; in the meantime, please see what other payment methods your teacher might support, and consider what you are able to give.
