Glenngarry Glen Ross is a good example of this, and if you ever worked in sales or Recruiting, you know this DOES happen.
SFC Schwartz
Can I just ask what the purpose of signing a one- year contract was? It seems to me that the purpose was specifically to get the teacher to commit for a year ( and avoid having to replace her midyear) while not committing anyone for a longer period. After all, they could have given her a five or even ten year contract - that’s what the principal at my kids grade school had.
But I'm a little confused- the co-op is a pre-k run by the parents with a single class? How many parents are there, and how many are on the board ? It seems almost as if she were popular with the parents , but not the board. Which I can easily enough see in a school of a few hundred students in different grades run by a non-parent board, but it seems a little strange in a pre-k class where the board might include parents of a quarter of the students
Indeed. Other factors include whether the contractor uses their own tools and can hire subcontractors, and whether the contractor stands to lose financially as a result of doing the work. I’m not saying that these and the other factors stated in the caselaw must each apply; but the totality of the contractual relationship must indicate (generally speaking) that the employer does not have the same control over an independent contractor as over an employee. (See 671122 Ontario Ltd. v. Sagaz Industries Canada Inc., [2001] 2 S.C.R. 983, 2001 SCC 59.)
Northern Piper, do you have access to a copy of the contract? I’m particularly interested in what it says about contract expiration and renewal, as well as how it addresses the Sagaz factors. If you do have a copy, I’ll have a few more questions.
That’s the kind of situation I’d expect. The parents get to feel like they have control over the situation, and can avoid an internecine battle if some contingent doesn’t like the person in the position. Instead, that contingent can argue in favor of another candidate instead of against the incumbent. Sucks for your friend though.
Thanks, Spoons - that’s a good summary - that’s what I thought it would be.
I blame idiot tv shows like survivor
There was a UK company I worked for in the 1990s - and again from 2001 - that was notorious for managing staffing levels this was. Whenever the panic button was pushed, they’d restructure several departments and then all n employees would have to apply for one of the n - r jobs. I got nabbed three times this way; once I went contracting, once I scored a sideways move to another branch of the Society, third time was final.
I work for a contractor that does work for the federal government. Every five years the government puts out a RFP for the work we do, and we have to submit a proposal. Other companies also submit proposals.
In essence, every five years we are fired and have to re-compete for our jobs.
A teacher’s contract? That’s a whole world to itself in contract and labor law with their own history of how that works. Teachers’ unions initially negotiated contracts for 10 month time frames with pay over 12 months and originally for teachers who were moms that only wanted to work school hours because their own kids were in school and those hours were a perfect fit. Then, over time, they had to negotiate for real living wages and not “moms’ pay” because for many, their salary was the breadwinning one in their household, even though they weren’t working near 40 hours for a full year. And even those not in unions get contracted in the standard way that teachers’ unions have put in place.
IOW, it’s a messed up system for anyone looking in from the outside.
So, in this case, I’m now pretty sure they’re looking to really fire the teacher without having to document all the problems which can become intractably messy.
Isn’t this ploy also a way for jurisdictions (such as Wisconsin under Scott Walker) to negate union contracts with public employees and coerce the workers to sign much less generous contracts in order to keep their jobs?
You’re both correct that when a union is involved, it’s a whole different ball game, but I don’t think a union is involved here. This seems to be a private organization. As the OP stated upthread:
Ah, let me clarify: Even in cases where a contract with a teacher is a non-union contract, it usually conforms to union-like rules simply because that’s the new normal.
The difference in this case is that this non-union teacher doesn’t have the protection of a union to tell the employer that firing and competing for re-hire is a game they won’t play.
Even in Texas, a non-unionized state for teachers, it is not odd at all to tell a teacher that their contract will not be automatically renewed, but that they are welcome to apply within the district and may be given preference over other candidates if they are needed.
Well, popular uprising appears to have solved the problem.
Letters began to be sent to the Board from concerned parents, essentially saying, "WTF are you doing?’
Then, Mrs Piper and I circulated a sign-up sheet to trigger a special meeting of the co-op members, a right that the members have under the Co-ops Act, with the agenda items of asking the Board to explain their actions and to require them to renew the teacher’s contract.
Got more than enough sign-ups in a very short time; didn’t actually have to file them with the Board; Board caved and has offered the contract to the teacher.
Well, technically, unless management is completely retarded, every employee is competing for their job every single day. The process you describe just makes it more formalized.
My work did that with everyone in my department but me. They wanted to lay off a bunch of people and didn’t want to hire them back, so they tweaked their jobs the 30% corporate policy said they would need to in order to reapply. Then laid them off and told them to reapply for the postings. Their last day was in January, and of course, none of them got rehired (they didn’t have cause to fire them). They still haven’t rehired the positions, and I’ve been doing the work of five people since January - or not because I refuse to. So stuff isn’t getting done. And I’m giving notice soon because of other changes in our household.
Yo, D, I know you do tax-related stuff, PM me if I can help find you a new gig.