FWD: Re: FWD: Contracting where you used to work

[<anonfwd -at- raycomm -dot- com>]

Forwarded anonymously on request.
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I've been working for my current employers for nearly six months on a
temporary contract that was presented to me as a probationary period - at
the end of the six months, if they were satisfied with what I was doing
(and I was happy to stay) they were to make me permanent.

Now contract renewal time is coming up. There's a dearth of technical
writing jobs in my area. And - on a somewhat flimsy reasoning - they have
refused to make me permanent, instead extending my temporary contract for
another three months. (I get paid holidays pro-rata, but no sick pay or
other benefits.) It seems to me that they get all the benefits of having a
permanent employee with few of the expenses, and I get all the
inconveniences of being a contractor with none of the benefits.

I was not able to negotiate a pay-rise: they have a firm rule that
permanent employees are assessed for pay rises only once a year, and I
have not yet been here for six months and count as a permanent employee
for payroll purposes. I could resign and offer my services as an hourly
contractor, but there are few benefits to them in accepting a deal like
that - and at the moment it's an employer's market. True, I can leave
on one week's notice and put them in a terrible fix - but that would
be unprofessional and would lose any chance they'd give me a good
reference. It would also be dumb, unless I had another job to go to.
Effectively, I'm stuck.

One lesson I have gotten from this: never trust that a company will hold
to its promises if it's inconvenient to them to do so. (I should not have
accepted the six month temporary contract in the first place: six weeks to
three months would have been much more appropriate.) Hindsight is a
wonderful thing.




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