With perfect posture and serene smiles, yoga teachers seem to have it all worked out. But as the business of lotus poses and sun salutations hits £900m a year in Britain alone, some have decided they want a fairer share. The UK’s first trade union for yoga teachers has been established with a warning that despite the “chai latte” image of their practice, many endure poverty wages.
In the footsteps of gig economy colleagues such as Uber drivers and takeaway couriers who have gone to the courts to campaign for improved terms, a new branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain is appealing to the UK’s estimated 10,000 yoga teachers to sign up. It is not, the group insists, “unyogic” to demand better pay.
The move is likely to set teachers against networks of yoga studios and gyms that typically pay from £10 to £20 an hour. With travel, preparation and physical exertion limiting a day’s teaching to no more than four lessons, the union says many teachers are earning less than the living wage of £9.50 an hour, or £10.85 in London, which is the minimum it is demanding alongside paid holidays. It will also campaign against incidents of sexual harassment and bullying.
Covid has hammered the yoga business, with studios and gyms closed during lockdowns. But before the pandemic, yoga studios’ revenues were considerable, and more and more people have trained as instructors. The number of people working in UK yoga and pilates increased by 12% between 2012 and 2020, according to industry research by Ibis World. In 2019 Triyoga, a London chain, took £8m in revenues from five studios, according to its accounts. Pure Gym, the UK’s largest operator of gyms, which made £30m profit in 2019, is among several nationwide chains that employ yoga teachers.
“There’s a disconnect between the image of the radiant yoga teacher drifting through the world and the reality of working lives, struggling to make enough money to pay our rent,” said Simran Uppal, 25, the secretary of the new union. “The global yoga industry is worth £60bn but the majority of teachers I know are struggling to get by on poverty pay. So much of the money is going to studios selling £8 green juices while teachers are running around harassed and underpaid.”
The union, which is believed to be only the second in the world after Unionize Yoga in New York, said a survey of members so far suggested 60% were paid below the living wage before Covid, with some paid as little as £5 an hour including unpaid overtime. Since Covid, some have set up online yoga lessons and others have taken different work. Self-employed yoga teachers do not qualify for furlough payments and many fell between the gaps in the government’s self-employment support scheme, Uppal said.
Lynette Greenaway, the union branch’s black and minority ethnic officer, said: “There’s a deeply ingrained false belief that it is ‘unyogic’ to ask for adequate compensation. It’s a performative silence that – together with cavalier attitudes towards our rights as workers on the part of some studio owners – increases the pressure and stress on yoga teachers to pay our bills and make a decent living from our work.”
The move comes ahead of a crucial supreme court judgment, expected within weeks, that will decide whether self-employed minicab drivers for Uber should be treated as workers and therefore receive the national minimum wage and holiday pay. Two drivers, Yaseen Aslam and James Farrer, have won a series of court victories, which if upheld by the UK’s highest court could radically change workers’ rights in the gig economy.
