Instructors at this boutique yoga studio may go on strike

Rumors are circulating of potential strike action next month from CorePower Yoga instructors, who say they are paid less per hour than the cost of a single class drop-in fee. 

CorePower Yoga has a cult following online, particularly for their Hot Sculpt classes, and currently has more than 200 locations across the US. But in the r/Corepower subreddit, a recent post urges members to pause or quit their membership to show support for instructors, who are fighting for fair wages and cleaner studios. 

“If you can stomach it to pause or quit your membership, it will benefit you as a consumer as well as the instructors who are paid on average $16/hour to teach and who are NOT paid for instruction preparation, playlist curation, and cue perfection,” the post reads. 

“CPY instructors deserve better conditions and better pay to provide for you, the high-paying consumer. You deserve to get what you pay for. At ~$200/month, you deserve a pristine studio with well-compensated instructors.”

The subreddit is now full of members questioning if their local studio is striking, or claiming they’ve paused their membership in support of instructors. 

While details of the strike action remain unclear, in a separate subreddit dedicated to CorePower Yoga teachers, a graphic posted last month claims the striking staff are demanding $30/hour compensation for CorePower instructors, $20/hour for cleaners, and studios to be deep cleaned a minimum of four times a year, suggesting they currently aren’t (alleged incidents of cockroaches, ringworm and black mold have also plagued the subreddit). 

One CorePower member brought the conversation to TikTok, where the video quickly gained over 170,000 views in just two days. 

“Actually I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while,” TikTok creator Carter Martin said in the clip. “I go to CorePower. I’ve gone on and off for years. My best friend used to be an instructor, and I always thought it was insane that she got $20 to teach the yoga class.” 

She continued: “You’re not just working the desk. You are literally teaching a specialized class based on specialized training that you’ve done and paid for through CorePower to be an instructor.”

CorePower teachers are 200-hour certified or are certified through CorePower Yoga’s Intensive Yoga Sculpt program, according to the company’s website. This training can run prospective teachers anywhere from $1,400 up to $4,000. Once qualified, instructors online have reported making anywhere from $15 to $20 an hour. (The company provided instructor pay details and rates in an interview with The Cut.) 

Fast Company has reached out to CorePower Yoga for comment. 

Meanwhile, to attend a class, drop-in rates run $40 in major cities like New York, while unlimited studio memberships are currently $259 per month.

“This is something that we as instructors talk about all the time,” another former instructor, Annie Williams, weighed in online. She goes on to detail how instructors are responsible for creating unique sequences for their classes, changed fortnightly, as well as the playlist. They are also required to arrive 30 minutes before class and stay 30 minutes after it finishes, she explained. 

“All of that work to get paid $20 to teach a class,” Williams said in the video. “It would just drive me insane when someone would come in and they had to pay $40 to take it.” She added: “I’m literally teaching 30 people.” 

For context, an instructor at a similarly buzzy fitness studio like Solidcore can reportedly make $100 per hour, when factoring in revenue share for a full class. Pay for class instructors at upscale gyms like Equinox, meanwhile, rumoredly starts from around $60-80 per class. 

Some blame private equity for the studio’s decline. In April of 2019, CorePower Yoga was sold to private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners for an undisclosed sum. One month after that, over 1500 instructors joined a class action lawsuit alleging substantial underpayment of wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Later that year, CorePower Yoga agreed to pay $1,492,500 to settle allegations. 

“Price goes up, quality goes down,” Martin concluded in her video. “Another victim of private equity.”

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