Have you ever hired anyone in your life? Ever made an offer?
Because the OP did not say “or I walk” - he made a simple counter offer, which maybe was too high but also maybe covered the benefits yanked away between the first interview and the second.
Money matters are confidential, and if someone started sending mail about offers all over the place any decent HR person would be on them like a ton of bricks.
Any decent manager would be, as I said, regretful that his original offer got shot down. Regretful that it got shot down, and regretful that he offered it before it got approved. If anyone did tell me this story with the premise that the candidate was in the wrong I’d call him a total schmuck, and every other manager I know would also.
In your world do conmen say people who did not fall for their con are awful?
Bluff? This is what negotiation is all about. If the OP was okay with losing the job through the counteroffer, he did nothing wrong.
So the OP imagined the talk about benefits? I assume the ad he replied to said permanent.
When I hired contractors it was because they fell into a different bucket than permanent employees. We managed by headcount, and contractors did not get included. They got benefits from the contracting company they worked for.
Which is another point. My old company and my current company never hire contractors as contractors for engineering jobs. For one thing individuals are not bonded and have no insurance. In fact if you want to hire a random person as a contractor there is a provision for that person to join one of our contracting partners. Say a contractor screws up and costs the company a ton of money. Who pays? Not the individual - no deep pockets.
There are certain jobs where this makes no difference, but oil work isn’t one of them.
BTW, no one is entitled or notentitled to anything. If the OP could negotiate benefits, he’d be entitled to them, right? Our contractors
got benefits from their contracting company.
According to the OP, he interviewed the first time for a permanent position with benefits, THEN they decided to offer “only a contract position without benefits.” It was an employer.
The President of the company realizes he’s so valuable that he offers him $100./hr and use of the company plane. See how easy that is to do?
Back to the actual situation. The op needs a real job that shows up on a resume in an industry that is currently lean on new jobs. Unless all the other applicants just fell out of college the competition involves people with experience who were displaced and have bills to pay. The only thing worse than a job with sub-optimal wages is no job at all.
The OP isn’t doing anything to dissuade the notion that millennials expect the world to owe them not only a job, but the job they want.
OP, you need to go back to school to find another field. The Oilfiled isn’t for you. In case you haven’t noticed, things are rough in the oil patch. It’s contracting, something it hasn’t done in 20 years. This is a golden time for someone who is bright, smart, and can deal with the stupidity of the corporate structure. In another 5-10 years, the industry will be paying through the nose for people with 5-10 years experience, since there aren’t going to be many of them; they guys with 20 years now will be retired and the ones with only 10 years experience now are being laid-off. The OP had a chance to be one of the guys who could name his own salary, but he let it go by for less than $5 an hour.
My guess is there are guys who have been laid-off with 5 years experience right there in Calgary (if you’re in Edmonton, twice as many) who would have jumped on a $30/Hr contract job. The service company wanted some new blood, newest education, someone who didn’t already know it all.
OP, if you get another shot at the brass ring, grab it.
In this particular case, however, the company has already lied about the pay, lied about the benefits, and lied about the hiring manager’s authority. When they’ve shown that they are willing to lie, why does anybody think they won’t continue to lie (or obstruct or mislead or whatever verb you like) whenever it suits their fancy or their purposes?
However, a job with sub-optimal working conditions can be worse than no job. For starters, what kind of reference do you think you’ll get from a company that lies freely to get its way? A job that shows up on your resume, but for which you can’t get even a reasonable reference (even just “yes he worked here and yes he is eligible for rehire”) is very hard to explain, and can be a deal-breaker in subsequent job searches. A job that leaves you seriously stressed to the point where you can’t make a good impression on any potential employer can likewise be a poor career move. A job that has a deleterious effect on your health or your relationships (marriage, etc.) isn’t a good deal.
Now, given the company has actively misled OP on multiple issues, what are the chances they’re suddenly going to be on the up-and-up in future? Sure, it’s possible they’re a great place to work once you get your foot in the door, but it’s at least as likely that they will be assholes every single day.
Why are you assuming the job would actually pay $30/hr, given the company’s history to date? We have no reason to believe that this offer was any more “real” or binding than the previous one.
I’m a licensed professional engineer, with more than 2 decades of professional experience, and I have been professionally trained in hiring and interviewing engineers. I would be stunned to see that the Board in Canada/Alberta cared about this. In the US the only things which would have any merit would be a violation of the principles and practice of engineering and its regulations, or the conviction of a felony-level crime (of any sort). I’d check and make sure that this even falls in their jurisdiction before bothering to mail them.
Also the fact that (if I understand the OP correctly) everything was done over the phone means you wouldn’t have any proof, right?
Who says the company lied? The OP, who got through an entire interview (the first) without realizing this was a contract position.
After the second interview (when they explicitly said “CONTRACT”, he still did not know what the word meant.
Apparently, it came down to the manager to tell the twit that “contract=no benefits”.
Now, would all of the twits in this thread who have never heard of contract work kindly leave?
If the OP has divulged enough to identify the company involved, this thread is real close to defamation, and the SDMB is quite tort-adverse.
If the OP still doesn’t, after 90 posts, that ‘contract=no benefits’ and ‘contract NOT EQUAL employment’, he is dumber than any person has the right to be.
As a precaution, this thread should maybe disappear if the ‘employer’ (still doesn’t get it, does he?) has been identified.
He still didn’t get that this was never a FTE position. They didn’t change the description, he didn’t understand what he was talking about.
They were looking for a contractor.
He thought they were looking for a FTE.
Now he is bad-mouthing the company on the web, accusing them of bad-faith negotiating. A rather serious accusation.
I’m amazed how many people assume a fresh college grad knows all about the ins and outs of forms of employment.
Now he knows what they meant when they said “contract” at the second interview.
That it took the manager’s call to tell him that contract=no benes is NOT the company’s fault. It is the OP’s for being so damned clueless that he couldn’t look up ‘contract employment’ and maybe find a clue.
Even if the term did change between first contact and second call, it was the twit’s decision to terminate the discussion.
Absolutely the worst thing he could have done was to try to open a discussion about 37.5 after being told that 35 was not possible.
Who the F**k does he think he is!?
A fresh grad is not worth the aggravation, and his name will not be forgotten by anyone who was involved.
To then go to the web and accuse the company that tried to give him $60K/yr of lying.
Absolutely incredible.
Greece may need another Finance Minister - maybe the OP just missed his true calling.
The OP specifically stated that he applied for a permanent full-benefits position, but “based on need the employer decided to offer only a contract position without benefits.” That means that the employer decided AFTER THE FIRST INTERVIEW to change the terms and offer something different “based on need.” Why are you so certain that the OP didn’t understand exactly what he applied for?
Contract does NOT necessarily mean no benefits. In particular, Canada has some different rules, and U.S.-centric experiences may not be applicable.
See, for example, the HR Council in Canada has a page on contract workers. The second subhead on that page is “When are contract workers employees?” This is not talking about employees misclassified as contract workers; these are people who are quite correctly in both categories at the same time.
Under Canadian law, it is perfectly possible to have a contract worker who is legally considered an employee and entitled to all of the usual employee benefits, even though they have a specified contract and everybody knows going in that the employment will last only for that defined term. It is also possible to have self-employed contract workers who are not covered by most labor laws (pardon me, labour laws), and who receive benefits if and only if the contract includes them.
The W-2/1099 distinction refers to U.S. law; Alberta isn’t in the U.S., and W-2/1099 is wholly irrelevant. In Canada, “contract worker” does not automatically equal “independent contractor” the way it does south of the 49th parallel.
Who said he just “assumed” anything? That’s what puzzles me the most about your point of view.
Okay, let’s settle this silliness once and for all: OP, were you explicitly told at the beginning of this process that the job you were applying for provided benefits? And did the promise of benefits go away before or after you knew it was a contract position?
All of the posters who are giving the OP grief for not understanding the difference between employment and contract positions should just back out of this thread, because all that they are demonstrating is that they think US law applies universally, even in other countries like Canada.
When you’re talking about a job offer in Canada, who gives a flying fuck what the IRS says, or IRS form W-this, or I-that? They’re completely irrelevant to the discussion.
In Canada, all employees are contract employees. That is, their relationship with their employer is governed by contract law. The contract doesn’t have to be in writing to have binding legal effect. Nor does the contract have to be in writing to trigger rights under employment standards laws.
There is a distinction between employees and independent contractors, but an employer can’t turn an employee into an independent contractor just by jiggery-pokery in a written contract. The test for independent contractor is set by the common law, with some modifications by statute. In a dispute, courts will asses the situation based on the particular facts of the case, measured against the law of independent contractors.
If you don’t meet those common law terms, then odds are you’re an employee. Rule of thumb is that if you’re paid an hourly wage, you’re an employee, which triggers rights under the relevant employment standards laws - things like maximum hours of work per week, minimum wage, vacation leave with pay, and so on.
None of which is meant as legal advice to the OP. I’m not his lawyer, and if he wants legal advice, he should contact an Albertan lawyer familiar with Alberta labour law. All I’m doing here is commenting in a general way on some of the truly wrong and patronising statements that are being offered.
The bottom line is that the OP failed to take advantage of an opportunity. Even if it appeared to be a crappy opportunity, he’ll never know what this might have become had he applied himself and impressed them.
At this point it seems like he’s just making shit up in order to justify his ranting and frothing. He assumes the OP applied for a contract position and just misunderstood, but there’s no actual evidence of that in this thread.
That’s perfectly clear to me: it was advertised as a position with full benefits. It was subsequently changed – after the interview – to a contract without benefits. Regardless whether the advertised job was classified as a contract-with-benefits or not – and the way it’s worded strongly suggests it was changed to a contract position – the company DID pull a bait-and-switch. And then did it again after he’d already accepted their offer. That, by my reckoning, is indeed the company lying to him, and I think he dodged a bullet.
A valuable life skill is knowing when someone is worth impressing and when they are not. In my experience, an employer who pulls a bait-and-switch on a job, whether it’s pay rate, benefits, or job description, is not someone who will ever provide long-term career benefit, only current job frustration. Those are the dead-end jobs that don’t ever lead to better things. Largely because the office politics are – surprise! – incredibly dysfunctional.
Yep - keep being unemployed and get a reputation for being unreasonable in your demands (are we disputing the part about demanding MORE than the original offer?) and all the other folks with no experience in either the specific field or types of employment (nobody bring up contract-to-hire’?) will back you 100%.
Of course, everybody with any experience says to wise up and deal with the reality that you are not entitled to a guaranteed life.
You can deposit all your support here in the bank - 'cause you ain’t depositing the company’s money.
But STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS!