3 Months Probation extended for another 3 months but new contract states that no previous employment counts as part of continuous period of employment I live in Dublin, Republic of Ireland and I was hired on the 21st March 2017 on the agreement of 3 months probation review to see how well I perform and if my performance was satisfactory then I will be given a permanent contract however my manager has been trying to get rid of me due to personal reasons, making my performance an excuse to terminate my employment. My manager hardly speaks to me and all communication are done via the assistant manager. On my probation review day, 21st June, I had a brief talk during my lunch with the assistant manager and he told me that the manager would like to extend the probation period by another 3 months to see how well you get on and if your performance is satisfactory, only then you will become permanent. I agreed to that and continued. Today on the 17th July, my manager gave me a new contract which I have not signed it yet, on which it states completely different to what I was told on my probation review talk. The contract states the following rather than the extension of probation period by another 3 months: Your employment began on 22nd June 2017 and no previous employment counts as part of your continuous period of employment. Your employment is temporary and is expected to end on or before 21st September 2017. The Unfair Dismissal Acts 1977-2007 will not apply where the only reason for ending the contract is the expiry of the fixed term, or the completion of the specified purpose. I have attached the old employment proof which proves that my induction date was on the 21st March 2017. I have also attached the new contract paper of 2 pages. If you refer to the old attached file, it clearly states that my induction date was 21/03/2017, meaning that I am already an employee and the new contract paper states that my employment began on the 22nd June which is absolutely incorrect. This new contract does not meet the conditions that were set on my probation review. Also, by signing this contract and if I understood it correctly, it would mean that I was only hired for 3 months and therefore this will have an affect on my paid holiday entitlement as I will be considered an employee who worked for 3 months even though on the 21st July, it will be 4 months. This new contract does not seem to make any sense at all as it will be undermining my paid holiday entitlement and I will get paid holidays only for 3 months rather than 6 months at the end of the contract and I am definitely sure that a lot of work ethics rules are being broken here as well as Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997 is being violated. I would like to know if I am right in any case regarding this and what I can do? Shall I sign it away? What can I say to the manager or the HR to persuade them to alter this contract? Or is it that I do not have any choice but to sign it any way? Also, by legal means how long do I have until I sign this contract paper? I really appreciate the help.
I would recommend talking to an adult person in HR. I'm quite sure they will notice that what your manager wants to do is more than dodgy, and doing something dodgy may be in the interest of your manager, but not in the interest of the company. The best thing is to go to HR, acting as if a mistake has been made, and point out to them what your start date was, and that the new contract has the incorrect starting date, and they need to fix this mistake or you can't sign the contract. If they insist you sign it, then you DON'T sign it. If they say you will be fired if you don't sign it, then you tell them that in that case you would get legal advice. BTW. You definitely don't sign this as it is. PS. This answer was posted on workplace.stackexchange, not law.stackexchange, so please don't complain if there is no legal content.
That is a very broad clause, broader than the default US rule for copyright, for example. (I know the question asked about the UK, I just happen to know the US copyright rule.) It would seem on the face of it to include independent research on a subject totally unrelated to the person's employment, done off the company's premises and not during normal work hours, but while the person was an employee.. Indeed it would arguably include the copyright to a novel written off premises and during off hours. Use of "course of employment" (instead of "term") would improve the provision. so would "as a part of his or her employment" or "closely related to the subject of his or her employment". Another possible restriction would be "Using the Company's facilities and/or equipment, or during normal working hours". However, my experience is that an employer will have drafted whatever language it uses through its company lawyer, and will be quite unwilling to alter it in any way. A prospective employee will probably be faced with a take-it-or-leave-it choice unless that person is a nearly indispensable figure to the company. One could send the company a certified letter saying, "When i signed the contract agreeing to {company language} I did not intend to include any developments made off company premises, not using company equipment, and unrelated to the subject or scope of my employment. I retain full rights to any such developments." Such a letter would help establish that there was no meeting of the minds to assign such non-employment-related developments or IP to the Company. How much weight it would have if the rights to such developments were the subject of a court case I am not sure.
Prove my work is not a trade secret violation Please don't. It's not your job to prove your innocence. The burden is on them to be specific, explain fully, and prove specific claims about your actions. In other words, don't justify, don't explain, and don't defend yourself to them. It's actually best you do not say anything to them, and just forward the letter to your legal counsel (Since you're selling software to be used in the medical field, I assume you already have some kind of legal counsel). For instance, even saying something as innocuous as "Managing patients, Exams, Bills etc are all public knowledge." could be used against you. Because it establishes the fact that you've been working on those features with them and that you've been working on those features with your new company (which doesn't necessarily follow, for all they know, you could have purchased a library module from someone else with those exact features). In other words, even if you were to reply with such an innocuous-sounding statement, you could be saving them months of cross-border discovery and litigation about some of their claims (even if you believed you were being entirely reasonable by defending yourself). But at the same time, don't take what I'm saying to mean that you should lie to them about which features you recently worked on. When I say that you shouldn't be talking to them. I mean that you should not be talking to them. You shouldn't be engaging with them and you shouldn't be giving them any shred of information whatsoever (implied or otherwise). It's not your job to make their job any easier. Do not reply to them. Don't even acknowledge the receipt of the letter (unless you already did by signing for it, which can't be helped). Use a legal intermediary. Give the letter to your own legal counsel (whether you signed for the letter, or not) and leave any reply to him or her (assuming he/she thinks this warning letter even warrants a response). And if this former employer gives you a phone call, kindly refer them to your legal counsel without saying another word.
In the US, code that you write in the course of employment is the property of your employer. Otherwise, anything that you create is your property. The gray area is things that you write during your employment but not in the course of your employment (hence the terms of the employment contract are vital). Something that you write before becoming an employee is not &quot;in the course of employment&quot;. However, if you use that code in the in the course of employment, you invite the argument that in fact the code was written in the course of employment. That argument can be squelched if you have an agreement with the employer that acknowledges that you are licensing your code to the employer in exchange for ... some consideration. It could be $1, or a similar unit of currency.
Assuming you have an assured shorthold tenancy, it's not the landlord himself that can evict you. The process is that he serves you notice, and if you don't move by the time the notice period ends, then he has to go to court in order to obtain a court order to end the tenancy. The landlord must demonstrate to the court that he has properly served notice to the tenant. This is a bit of a grey area, but this article suggests that, to avoid ambiguity, the landlord should either use recorded delivery (which would provide proof as to whether or not the tenant received it), or deliver it by hand with an independent witness present. In the case of a section 21 "no fault" eviction, the only defence a tenant has is that the correct procedure has not been followed. So it is in the landlord's interest to ensure that notice has been received beyond any doubt.
This is a confusing issue in most common law jurisdictions and AFAIK, Canada and Australia still rely on common law definitions of this. First, any arrangement where someone provides services in return for compensation is a contract. If worker is an employee then the contract is an employment contract and is subject to whatever laws apply to employees (things like, workers' compensation, withholding of tax, superannuation etc.). If the worker is instead operating their own business that is independent of the principal's business they are independent contractors and employee law doesn't apply. In most cases it is easy to determine if someone is an employee or is a contractor. For example, if your business hires a bookkeeper to work set hours for which they are paid a salary from which you detect and remit tax, etc. then they are clearly an employee. Your external accountant who does your year end taxes, has their own premises and contracts to many other businesses is clearly an independent contractor. However, the dividing line is not clear cut in edge cases. Using British Columbia as an example: Calling a person an independent contractor, even if the worker agrees, does not decide the issue. In order to determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under the Act, it is important to consider the definitions of “employee”, “employer” and “work”. The Act defines these terms very broadly. The courts have developed some common law tests that may be useful, but they must be considered in a manner consistent with the definitions and purposes of the Act. Some of these tests include how much direction and control the worker is subject to, whether the worker operates their own business and has their own clients, whether the worker has a chance of profit or a risk of loss, whether the work they are doing is integral to the business and whether there is an ongoing relationship. The longer a person works for another, the more closely the worker’s duties are connected to the purpose of the business, the more the person who pays the worker controls the material and tools and directs the activities, the more likely it is that the relationship is one of employer/employee. So, deciding if a person is an employee or contractor is not up to the worker or the principal and what they may or may not have written on a piece of paper! The entire relationship must be considered. As an additional complication, legislation is not uniform between state/provincial and federal levels of government and even within the same jurisdiction. For example, in Australia, it is possible that a person is an independent contractor for Federal income tax law but an employee for state workers' compensation law.
Jurisdiction has not been provided, so I've written a general answer: Not necessarily; often, such provisions clauses will have their own expiration dates, for example "for five years after signing, X", with X still being valid after cancellation up to 5 years(so if you cancel after 3 years, X is still valid for 2 more years), or "for two years after cancellations, Y"(especially common with non-compete clauses) where the time-limit of Y starts when the contract is cancelled. Other clauses are meant to indeed be enforced forever, such as some non-disclosure, non-disparagement, or indemnity clauses. For example, an indemnity clause in a contract that prevents a party from suing the counter-party for work done under the contract would be pointless if it could be bypassed by a party terminating the agreement. There are lots of legal limits, based on the terms of the provision, and its nature, all governed by the contract law of the jurisdiction under which the contract was drafted under and/or is governed by (this is generally obvious, except for some cross-border contracts, which generally will have a declaration as to whose laws apply). It is not inherently abusive, but can certainly be abused. What is considered abusive often varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (not only on this issue, but on legal issues in general). It depends on the jurisdiction, and generally on the terms of the provision itself. If the court asked to enforce the terms of the agreement feels that the provision is illegal or abusive, they won't be enforced (and possibly the entire document declared null and void, depending on the central-ness of the illegal or abusive provision; some provisions specifically state that invaliding the provision doesn't invalidate the whole contract to try to prevent this). If they don't feel the provision is illegal or abusive, they will generally enforce it.
Get a lawyer. That employer is skating on very, very thin ice. You can’t have a non-compete agreement in Germany at all without the employer paying reasonable compensation. What is reasonable is decided by courts, but half your last regular salary is not “reasonable”. Especially if this would endanger your status of being allowed to work in Germany. If you were a non-German EU citizen, any non-compete agreement would be immediately invalid because it violates the right of free movement; how nonEU citizens are affected, I don’t know. The rest of the agreement seems quite illegal to me. I would think that any good employment lawyer would love to take your case.