> I missed 3 weeks of pay because no one could stop the machine.
Why has this company not made their loyal worker whole? He stayed there when they needed him even when their system was trying to lock him out.
They need to fix this. If they don't, they are not a company anyone should work for. Perhaps the worker did not want to risk making a big stink, but a manager should have taken the initiative. Humans were involved by the end and well aware of what was going on.
I agree. It's a theme I run across in many US-worker situations we read about on HN. There is such a lack of basic rights, but also basic norms when relating to workers.
Ethical behaviour, from my perspective, would be to compensate the employee, regardsless of his legal rights. In a more worker-central system, the worker should have easy recourse to an official judgement for his money.
In the Netherlands there is even a concept of culpability in laws regarding firing. Mess up too much, and the employer will have to pay a premium on the disengagement fee. And while our economy is moving towards a lot more 'sole employee contractors' with less worker-rights, you still have rights and a way to affordably enforce them. For them (only) basic contract law holds. That would probably mean paying the full 3 years in this context. A contract _is_ a contract.
None of what you says really applies in this case. According to the article the thing that triggered this was the failure to renew his contract.
If it had renewal intervals, that means he wasn't legally entitled to 3 years.
This is likely why he wasn't paid for the interim either. The best the company could do would likely be to bump up the future rate or offer a "signing bonus".
Being a contractor is not at all like being an employee despite how similar the responsibilities are. You have to watch contract details like renewals like a hawk. This guy and his recruiter should have included compensation for failing to notify when not renewing.
Not sure how this works in other jurisdictions in the EU but in Germany a work contract can be silently renewed if both parties act as if it had been renewed even if the contract itself says it has to be renewed explicitly and in writing.
If you keep showing up to work and your superiors keep managing you (and especially if you keep getting paid) the contract remains valid beyond its stated expiry date.
It does though, failure to renew a contract should be announced in writing a month in advance to allow the employee to search for a new job and take holidays that may be left. If the announcement is late, the employee is entitled to an extra months' pay.
I doubt that's correct legal analysis. This worker is not an employee of the company, and so cannot assert rights afforded employees. There might exist special termination provisions in the contract, but that's speculation.
While I agree with the letter of your legal analysis, it should not be "the best the company could do" to make the worker whole. It ought to be expected that both parties behave ethically.
The worker should not abandon the company during their time of need because of an unfortunate legal SNAFU. The company, in turn, should take it upon themselves to ensure that the worker doesn't suffer economically for having done the right thing by them.
Why wouldn't a contractor leave the company when the company has done everything in its power to show the contractor the door? Aside from doing the job properly, the contractor has zero obligation to the company whose property he's working on.
In the 2-3 days after the glitch, when "there was an emergency on the multimillion dollar tool I was working on", I think it was good of the worker to not get hung up on the contract status and trust that it could be worked out by people in good faith.
Workers and management on a team ought to be able to trust each other to that degree, even if we understand that the interests of all parties are not fully aligned. That trust goes both ways.
Take that too far, tolerating abuse of trust, and you betray your obligation to yourself. But in small amounts, it's admirable.
Do you seriously think I'm suggesting that they stay indefinitely without pay?
Or, if you are saying that they shouldn't stay even for a day, even in the face of an emergency, then I disagree. Even if they don't have a legal obligation to do so, I respect those who would, like this worker. And I would prefer to work along such people as colleagues, trusting that if they could help it, they wouldn't leave their team in the lurch.
I don't like the idea that complete lack of trust and hairtrigger hostility should be the default mode of workforce participation.
There's no moral obligation to work without pay, even for one day, even if you've gotten "promises" that you'll be made whole. An ethical company would send him home if they didn't know they could pay him or not, whatever the reason. If they need him to work THAT DAY because of some corporate "emergency", they should pay him cash on the barrelhead or make a similar arrangement, until they can get his regular paychecks going again.
As advice to a worker in this situation, it certainly makes sense to gut it out and take the risk of doing work without pay. It's, for most people, probably a much smaller risk than risking getting "really" fired without first having another job lined up.
What if the worker stayed, expecting that the company would make things right, but when it was discovered that companies simply don't DO that and haven't since the 1980s, files a lawsuit or otherwise takes aggressive action to force the company to treat them fairly?
For what it's worth, I attribute the worst amoral behavior to corporate personhood rather than capitalism. Thus my preferred remedy is to eliminate corporate personhood, rather than capitalism.
The part of being ethical in business outside the legalise still holds?
I would agree with your point of professional contracting: contract for the worst and write out scenarios in contracts.
In this case though the employer acted in a way that signalled renewal and the contractor delivered in good faith. Back to contract law and ethics: are services delivered possibly without contract but in good faith without value and compensation?
Failure to pay employees is "wage theft" in the USA.
The Netherlands sounds a bit employer friendly in the UK mess up at all in firing some one you automatically lose even if the employee is as guilty as sin and was caught bang to rights
He elaborates a bit in the comments - it seems he's entitled to the money, but couldn't be bothered: "So I had to do an appeal, and go through a long process that I did not care much to go through. I had a mind in quitting after all."
Sounds very strange that he wouldn't care to do a bit of paperwork, which he from the sounds of it could probably well justify to do on company time, with the manager and director being supportive. Or get the agency to do it for him, and bill them for the trouble. Or whatever. Something smells a bit fishy about that part of the story.
The bit about the manager and director is in the main article. There's nothing about pay, but they're presented as entirely sympathetic and angry about the system on his behalf.
As for "fishy", I find it very strange that someone writes an article emphasising twice that they're out three weeks of pay, but then couldn't be bothered to do anything about it. There's breach of contract, this isn't a long and arduous appeals process, it's open and shut, and if it isn't you have a lawyer deal with it, and recoup expenses, too. And if the guy just doesn't care about it, then why does he mention it twice?
And for the purposes of this, and the other sub-thread that is incredulous about this, this is not an American thing: If you're a contractor in Europe, and you don't get paid, and you then don't do anything about that, then you don't get paid. There's no process that automatically fixes things when the aggrieved party doesn't ask for them to be fixed (and yes, even in Europe, there's a bit of annoying process and paperwork to deal with).
The article is written, I think, to criticize the reliance on machines—not this individual company. I don't think he wrote it out of a grudge.
Even if he's legally entitled to the money, bringing a lawyer into the mix is likely to sour his relationship with his client (he's a contractor), and—rightly or wrongly—could give him a bad reputation in the local community, making it harder to find work in the future.
I'll also note that small, claims court might be able to handle a case over just a few weeks pay. He wouldn't need a lawyer for that. The risk and costs of losing are more manageable. He could send some emails about the pay he lost asking nicely citing the work he did while there. Then firmly. Then, once at a better employer, he can take the case to small, claims court.
I'd actually rather people sue over this to establish some kind of case law where companies' legal teams tell their management to make a default policy of giving the missed pay on demand. There might already be case law on it.
I suspect this is the difference. If this company is incapable of not firing someone, I imagine their appeals process could be equally miserable. Sure, maybe the manager and director want to repay him, but actually releasing funds to pay someone who "wasn't employed" is going involve a lengthy battle with some HR/Accounting computer system that just wants its invariants not to vary. Depending on somebody's financial position, I can see them deciding to just walk away on even a large chunk of money to avoid the mess.
The good thing about places like that is (a) they don't actually care about the money, it's a rounding error. For some smaller firms paying someone for three weeks of not working (regardless of fault) could actually be a problem. (b) They also have a legal department who's invariant is "don't get sued for breach of contract because of a stupid mistake that a small cheque can make go away".
But, of course, the author is perfectly within his rights to just not pursue this, and I have no idea what processes he'd been told to expect for this -- it's just strange that he would emphasise something he doesn't care about in the post.
> a legal department who's invariant is "don't get sued for breach of contract
This is a good point. I was thinking that no matter how trivial the money, actually dragging a check out of the accounting system would be a serious hurdle. But the solution I missed would be to sic legal on it - their machine tends to beat out everyone else's.
“Made available? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the appeals department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the forms, didn’t you?”
“Yes, yes I did. They were made available in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'”
Sounds like he's contracting at a huge company. His contracting company isn't going to make waves over this. I would guess the contracting company is making $300+ an hour off this guy, paying him $50 an hour, and they have 200+ other contractors in the building.
But nobody will. This is a common story in contractor arrangements---the big, unwritten benefit of the process is that all incentives are aligned to sweep small mistakes (1) under the rug. Contracting client doesn't want to jeopardize a good contract, contractee doesn't want to jeopardize their contract, and employee doesn't want to get fired and black-balled. Who cares if it's a little illegal? :(
(1) "Small" in relation to the whole contract deal; what's one employee's salary in a million-dollar agreement between two corporations?
Real story from one of the (big) french telecom companies I worked for, as a contractor (a few years ago)...
In that company, a regular employee was given a full desk, contractors were only given 2/3 of a desk (meaning 2 desks put side by side for 3 persons).
Also, contractors were NOT allowed to go to ANY conference. Even when it was about technical stuff that was directly for their project. We had to rely 100% on a transmission of information by our managers/team leads. This led to humorous results, to say the least.
Things like: a BIG meeting with plenty of people and managers, who then decided a HUGE technical change on the network, without the ONLY expert because he happened to be a contractor. Once given the results of the meeting, the guy was in a "WTF?" shock. He told me that be immediately binned the request: it basically asked him to disable the authentication server! Not the best decision for a BIG ISP, LOL. Seriously, that's almost beyond belief. (But I have other incredible stories similar to this one).
As a contractor, I have really been mistreated A LOT. So much so that I've sworn never to do it again.
I'm a contractor in France, the treatment depends on where one is working. Canal+ and PSA were bad, but the current situation is good, there's no difference between myself and the employees.
Sounds like departments were using contractors as full members of staff. Contractors should be brought in for a specific purpose, as a consultant to staff, as an extra pair of hands to follow the whims of staff.
If contractors are the only expert in a domain, there are big problems. Of course in corporations this is quite frequent - middle managers have yearly budgets for contractors, but aren't allowed to use that money to increase their headcount.
A company I work for decided to get a contractor in to run a £40m project. This makes sense for a management perspective, they get to blame the contractor (who's already left) if it fails, and they get to claim the glory if it works. It's terrible for a company though.
If I want 500 cables run in a data centre, or even 5 cables if it's a long way, I'll get a contractor in. Saves me a day by not having to do that work neatly and lets me do more important things (like ranting on HN). If I want someone to build me a fancy gui, I'll specify the frameworks, and let them mess around with the look and feel, but ultimately I own the output of the work, I need to be able to deal with it as if I wrote it myself.
I don't really know if there's wage theft going on. I suppose the client company got some free work out of him, but the company can argue he shouldn't have been in the building. His badge didn't work, etc. But maybe the will let him bill those hours retroactively.
If he's working for a contracting company, why would he lose wages? Wouldn't he still have a contract with that company? I work for a contracting company (in the EU), and if the client lets me go, I still get paid until a new project can be found.
Their account got cancelled because the contract did not get renewed. Sounds like the company fulfilled the terms of the original contract, just (accidentally) didn't renew it. Many long term contracts require periodic renewals and/or options.
>Some of that work included renewing my contract in the new system... When my contract expired, the machine took over and fired me.
As I interpreted the piece, it was a three year contract which was stored in an old system, and not transferred when that system was replaced. So the firing was triggered by the system no longer seeing any valid contract.
If that's true, it would be breach of contract. But if it was a rolling contract expected to end after three years, then yes, it would be a weird situation but not a breach.
As I read the piece, it was a three year contract which was included in the old HR system, but not ported to the new one. If that's true, it was certainly breach of contract - "we forgot to upload the paperwork" doesn't get you out of honoring it.
With contract staff, the duration is usually a not to exceed. Also, it’s typically a contract to deliver a person with specific skill, not a specific person.
There are exceptions, but they are pretty rare in tech.
It's not weird - the vast majority of long term contracts I've seen (for services my company provides) are several years long but requires the other party to renew the contract at periodic intervals.
So the contract was negotiated at a specific price point for (say) three years but every X months the other party can opt out by not renewing. They only commit for a certain term.
Perhaps he should've written it as an "adding" instead of "renewing" since it's an existing contract with the merged company that needed to be properly added to the take over company.
How do you think you will enforce that contract? Hire a lawyer? You might as well go to the ATM grab as much cash as you possible. Then put it all in a garbage can and light a match. It will be far less costly and more productive then attempting pursue that contract.
Sue in small claims court for week 1. Win. Obtain judgment.
File lien against company assets. Sue in small claims court for week 2. Win. Obtain judgment. File lien against company assets. Repeat as necessary. Offer settlement in return for not suing anymore.
Is this just wishful thinking that, if something went wrong with your paycheck, the world would be just and there would be an easy legal remedy waiting for you?
From what I understand, you can only sue for $1000 or less in small claims court. An IT contractor who is making $1000 or less per week has bigger problems.
I have good news for you: the small claims limit varies by state and, according to data from this website[1], the average upper limit is $8K (median is $6K, with the lowest being $2.5K).
Or has been done in the UK send bailiffs to the company head office :-)
Of course you'd shop around for the Bailiff company with the worse reputation and get them to send the lads who moonlight at that dodgy night club as Bouncers.
In reality it would be: spend court fees..sue in small claims court. Win. Good luck collecting in many cases. Filing for a lien? Good luck with that pointless venture...
Once you have a judgement, you contact the Sheriff to help you collect. With a judgement, you are able to take things from them in order to make your judgement. Usually once that actually starts happening, the company will cut you a check pretty quick.
In most states, the fee to file in small claims is somewhere between $30-$100. Filing for a lien with the local sheriff is another $100 or so. Well worth it for 3 weeks wages.
I don't know, does US not have a small claims court? In UK you'd pay £90 to file a case, you'd get a judgement in about a week and the company would be ordered to pay. Like I really don't understand this entire issue. Did he even ask HR to be compensated for this time? I feel like the whole article is missing some crucial information.
Yes, the US has small claims courts. They are run at the state/county level, so fees and maximum recovery values vary. Fees generally run $30-$100 and max. recovery somewhere around $5k. After winning a case, filing a lien with the sheriff is another $100 or so.
During the 1980s, one idea became paramount in business management schools, books, seminars, etc: The worker must be disposable. Any worker who becomes important to the success of the organization must be fired immediately upon this realization. If you permit that person to remain, they will become even more integral to the organization. Eventually, they will realize this and ask for more pay. Eventually, they will want pay which is greater than industry standard for workers in their position. That can never be permitted to occur (lest the industry standard wage rise), so they will have to be fired at that point. And then, the loss will do great damage. Best to fire them as soon as they become indispensible and deal with the smaller amount of damage then.
This sort of thinking kind of makes sense in a world where almost every company is a big factory company with their workers primarily doing repetitive physical labor. And the business management world has not adapted at all to the transition to mental labor. Their businesses fail and suffer for this, but as it's a universal condition (yes even among Google and such... if the company has a physical office, then they haven't even done the obvious to benefit from the move to mental work) there's not much pressure motivating change.
> Why has this company not made their loyal worker whole?
IMO because the generally demonstrated position of the labor force is that companies do not have to (which I hate, to be clear).
IMO, employees buy into the employer/owner-propogated myth that they are "lucky to be employed." As a result, employees greatly undervalue their labor and give up any leverage to make employers do the right thing.
Having been around the block a few times, I view 'work' as a transaction in which my employer and I need to realize fairly mutual benefits: most people don't. Employees generally see jobs and titles as a way to assess their societal value. And employers, knowing that, can do pretty much anything they want to people, dangling the occasional carrot to encourage higher worker output, but mostly working w/sticks.
This is also contributes to the zero real wage growth in a supposedly tight job market.
TLDR: power dynamics and poor 'game play' on the part of employees
Why has this company not made their loyal worker whole? He stayed there when they needed him even when their system was trying to lock him out.
They need to fix this. If they don't, they are not a company anyone should work for. Perhaps the worker did not want to risk making a big stink, but a manager should have taken the initiative. Humans were involved by the end and well aware of what was going on.