Not only that, that should be a major bargaining chip. “I’m all you’ve got, and without me you’re utterly screwed. Now what’s all this about me only being part time? Why don’t you take a day or two to figure out whether you want me full time or if you want to be utterly screwed, and then we can finalize the details.”
Stand up for yourself and get out from under your current employer.
You get the government you ask for and right now, you are still willing to be abused. So they will continue to abuse you.
Well, my employee handbook states that professional staff have to give 4 weeks notice. So it’s not unprecedented. But six MONTHS? You can grow a baby to the point where it can live on its own in six months!
Do they return that courtesy when they discharge one of the professional staff?
OP:Wanna come work for me? Western Pennsylvania. Specifics can be discussed once you get here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zsofia View Post
Well, my employee handbook states that professional staff have to give 4 weeks notice.
Originally Posted by Fear Itself
Do they return that courtesy when they discharge one of the professional staff?
Here, they walk you out of the building, and then pay you for the 4 weeks. Whether you quit or they riff you.
Six months notice, and you think the new company will feel too sorry for the old one to even hire you away? Am I missing something, because that just sounds… odd. But I do think you should get together with the Doper who informed his wife that he will be leaving her… in a year.
I have to say, OP, you remind me of the guy Dick Cheney shot in the face, who ended up apologizing to the Dick for stepping into his line of fire.
Of course not!
Of course, it’s pretty damned hard to get fired here, but I’ve seen it happen to two people (not regular floor-type librarians) who did get the Security march. I didn’t even know we did that until I heard about it from somebody taking a smoke break at the time.
As you have not declined my offer, I will assume acceptance.
Seriously, I almost can’t believe what I’m reading here! Dude, I’m not trying to pick on you or insult you when you’re down, believe me. But you have got to start standing up for yourself.
You’ve been very cagey as to your profession, so there’re a lot of unknowns here that we are all working around in the discussion. . . But this is a professional field, right? You don’t work for the mafia or in some kind of strange under-the-table quasi-legal job (right?). There should be a certain level of professional respect and ethics on both sides of the employment coin. These people are treating you terribly and you should recognize that. If what they did with regards to your salary isn’t illegal, it damn well ought to be. And you know, deep-down, that it is absolutely unethical for them to treat you that way. This company is not just walking all over you, they are curb-stomping you and laughing behind your back about it.
Now, whether you want to sue or not is a personal choice. It may be unworth your time and expense to actually sue, depending on the amounts involved. However, I think you ought to consult a lawyer just to get a truer sense of just how outrageous their conduct has been. Maybe that will get you out of the habit of defending these crooks.
And with this latest update, it’s even worse! Seriously, think about what you’ve just told us: They aren’t paying you even a full-time salary and at the same time, they have less staff than they were hoping to hire. If they were planning for 3 employees and only hired you, they can afford to pay you properly. Even if they were planning to rip-off all 3 hires equally, the fact that they didn’t actually hire 3 people should mean they have both a surplus of allocated funds and a higher expectation of your productivity. In many industries, that would put you in a golden position to reap benefits rather than getting screwed over. They should be paying you bonuses to keep you happy. Perhaps if they dealt ethically with employees, they would have had more success in hiring?
You do not owe them 6 months of notice. Repeat that to yourself over and over until you get it. You do not owe them 6 months of notice. There are myriad ways that this whole deal can go wrong in 6 months and end up with you out the door and no new job. The people have already proved that they are unethical, so you cannot depend on them not trashing your reputation with the new employer. Even two weeks is enough time for them to do terrible damage to you, but to allow them 6 months is insane.
Your concern about leaving them in a bad situation would be admirable if they were an upright company that had dealt with you honestly and were just going through a bad stretch. In this situation, it makes you looks like a doormat to me (and obviously to many others here on the SD). What you need to realize is that if everyone in your field thinks you are a doormat, they will treat you like one. People don’t respect doormats, they step on them, they grind dirt into them. In any profession I’ve been involved with or even observed, people who are respected tend to have certain qualities: high levels of ability and competence; high ethical standards; initiative; and the willingness to stand up for what’s obviously right, on their own behalf or for others. The way you talk about your current employer goes way past being deferential into outright submissive and that is doing you a dis-service now and will likely continue to harm your career in the future.
Ask your new potential employer for an official offer (in writing!). It should spell out your salary and benefits and a start date. Make sure to ask them when the job opens up. If it is farther than two weeks from now, accept the job and then wait until 2 weeks before the start and give your official notice at the current job. If the new job opens up sooner than two weeks, tell them you would like to give your current employer proper notice and ask to make you start date two weeks from acceptance. This is pretty standard stuff in most industries or professional fields. You’ve talked a lot about how your field is different and unusual. . . Maybe so, but to some extent, that can only be driven by what people will put up with. Stop putting up with it.
Sorry for the novel-length post everyone. . .
OP, are you paying even the slightest attention to what everyone here is telling you? You are being screwed, and you know it and they certainly know it, and you don’t owe them 6 months or even 6 weeks notice before leaving.
You also know they have the money to pay you full-time, because they couldn’t get the two other hires they wanted to make.
You are also making a lot of assumptions that you should not be making, even aside from the 6 month notice thing. You say the these other palaces (both the ones nearer to and farther from home) will not hire you immediately – that becuase of academic calendars it would be at least 6 months or a year. That is a ridiculous assumption. They hire when they need to hire, and if they have trouble finding qualified people, they hire when a qualified person comes available.
These are all academic positions open right now at UW Madison. They are hiring well into the school year, which has already started. And in another month or so there will be a bunch more postings with later start dates. And you see some start dates have already passed – because they haven’t found the person they want, but I guarantee you, if they find that person they will not ask him or her to wait another ten months for the start of the next school year.
OK, having worked in a similar sector, I’d just like to say that the OP’s concerns are not out of order. The work she’s doing may require a security clearance. That means that everyone you have ever worked for/with is open game to be interviewed at any time before during or at outbrief from every position you will ever want, get or leave in the future. One simply can not operate in this zone without maintaining happy folks at every level in every job. It’s impossible, of course, which is why I don’t do it anymore. I swore I woud never open myself up to that level of scrutiny, dysfunction and dependence again. But dang I miss the extra $20-25K that comes with it.
Add to that academia, which is a notoriously gossipy and personality-driven job market. It’s also notoriously shrinking. And underfunded. Not to mention that if the new job is in the same State, then the two schoold are probably part of the same University system.
All that said, you do need to stand up for yourself. If they budgeted for three people they can afford to pay you full time; and if they changed the budget after they sent your letter, they were under obligation to inform you of that before you moved out there. Try to get a copy of the Grant under which you are working. That should spell out exactly what is available, and give you some insight as to how they are profiting from this move. Most likely the Prof leading the project has taken either too many hours, or too high a rate for him/herself. And mot llikely that’s who you’ve spoken to, right?
My recommendation is to go to the payroll office, letter in hand, and suggest there has been a mistake. Point out the agreed-upon salary, and the number of hours you’ve worked. Then ask if you weren’t supposed to be paid for those extra hours.
I say this because in my dealings I’ve noted that although within departments a lot of shenanigans happen, when another department starts looking into it they straighten up quick. The payroll officer knows the rules, and probably has the power to enforce them.
Assume you are as important to them as they are treating you, act accordingly.
Yeah… unless the position is a teaching one, I don’t get this. I work for a university too. I was hired October 30th and began working November 8th. I didn’t even have to wait for the spring term to begin.
The lead times for funding research positions are very different than those for funding teaching positions. I’m not sure it’s helpful for us to be questioning the OP’s knowledge of her industry. We also do not know what the stakes are of her leaving. A minimum of four people, and slots for three more seems to indicate a need for 24-7 surveillance of the experiment. There could be animals which would be left unfed if she just walks off. We don’t kow, so let’s quit picking this nit.
So why doesn’t she just tell us what the deal is? She opened this thread to ask for advice but seems to be ignoring it because we don’t have enough information to actually formulate any rational advice. Do either give us the relevant information or stop playing catch-the-fleeing-mouse games.
IANAL but I believe this is correct. And, I think, there are certain default assumptions a judge would make. If you have a letter offering you “a job”, by default that should mean full-time job.
Working 70 hours/week and being paid for 40 was quite common, at least in my Silicon Valley salad days. Working 40 hours/wk and being paid for less than 40 sounds unusual … and illegal.
With you as an example of how they treat their employees, it’s easy to understand why they will have trouble filling the position!
Does the organization have money? If so, use your leverage against them.
I don’t know that any advice we could give is going to be helpful because you have cast your work circumstances to be so strange and apart from normal workplace procedures and norms that you reject all advice to stand up for yourself with “No, no I couldn’t possibly do any of that, because of …the nature of my work”.
So far we know -
1: Hires are made a year and a half ahead of the time they will be working
2: It’s a very small field where everyone knows everyone else
3: You are very critical to the operation of this program
4: This is a field where staffing is so critical people are expected to give 6 months to a years notice that they are leaving, and the company they are leaving from will be OK with them still being employed until that time
5: This is field where they will underpay you by 40% vs the representations made and you think it’s not a good idea not to confront them on this.
I have to admit the context is baffling. 1-4 makes it sound like you should be getting paid very, very well (relative to normal salaries) for this small field, super critical work you do, and yet you are willing to take a financial beating. How can you be that super exclusive and critical to the operation and still have no financial leverage?