Am I eligible for unemployment benefits while waiting for a final job offer? I was laid off for 'lack of work' earlier this week. About a day or so later I ended up accepting an employment offer from a large corporation. However, the issue is, I cannot start this job for six or more months due to going through an extensive background check process (aka security clearance). During this time I am not receiving any payment from the corporation. The employment offer letter I accepted states: &quot;We recommend that you not resign from current employment, if applicable, until the background verification is complete. Failure to satisfactorily complete or an unsatisfactory outcome on any of the contingencies may result in withdrawal of this employment offer.&quot; Given that my employment with this company is contingent on passing a background verification that is going to last roughly six months, and my current job laid me off - am I eligible to file for unemployment benefits or not? For reference I am located in Pennsylvania.
Yes As far as unemployment is concerned, your &quot;offer&quot; is only a potential job, as it is not yet binding, and in any case for their purposes it does not count until you actually start paid work. However, if you apply for unemployment you will be required to seek other appropriate work, probably a minimum of three contacts or applications per week. Should one of those offer employment, if you do not accept and do not have a good reason for refusing, you may lose your unemployment benefits. Of course, you could always accept such work and resign when and if you pass the background check, but that might look bad on your resume the next time you look for work, if that is any time soon.
Clearly in this case the writing does not reflect your actual agreement. If you were to bill for 1.5x your normal rate for hours over 40/week, relying on the writing, and it came to court, you might win, based on the general rule that matters explicitly covered in the written agreement are treated as final, and evidence of contradictory oral agreements are often not accepted to contradict the contract document. This is known as the parole evidence rule. But you don't plan to issue such a bill, so that won't come up. I don't see that you are at any legal risk. But you could send the client a letter saying that you signed the contract document so as not to hold the job up, but you think there is a mistake in it (pointing out exactly where and what the error is). This would help establish your ethics and good faith, so that if somehow there was a problem over this later (although that seems unlikely) you can't be accused of any improper actions. Keep a copy of any such letter. By the way, if you are an independent contractor, the governmental standard for overtime does not normally apply (in the US). If you are an employee of a consulting company, it may or may not, depending on your salary level and the kind of work you do. An independent contractor can contract for a higher rate for overtime hours, if the client is willing to agree. Many clients will not be willing.
In the US, persons with a disability are entitled to a reasonable accommodation for their disability. There is no requirement to tell an employee everything about their working conditions before a hire, in fact it would be illegal for the employer to ask &quot;Do you have a disability that would prevent you from working underground?&quot;. Once hired, you can request an accommodation for your disability.
Not very nice of the employer, actually quite cowardly. Being not nice and cowardly is not against the law. Being in the EU, and having been employed for ten years, the company will have duties to find a different position in the company at the same pay, and only when that fails, the employee can be laid off and will have a reasonable amount of notice, plus a reasonable amount of redundancy pay due to him. Unfortunately, he can expect only the legal minimum if the company behaved like this already. Good companies would provide a generous redundancy pay, plus pay for you to have any agreements checked by an employment lawyer of your choice - which means the employee can be sure they are not ripped off, and the employer is sure they cannot be sued for any reason. Obviously if they want him to quit, then the one single thing your relative mustn't do is to quit. Let them pay him. Plenty of time to look for a new job.
if a manager emailed an prospective employee a contract containing the pay rate of $20/hr, if the prospective employee crossed out $20/hr and replaced it with $25/hr, then went to work and gave the manager the contract which he failed to carefully read, continued working for a few months, would the employee be entitled to $20/hr? A party ought to timely alert or notify the other counterparty about any disagreements or proposed changes. This is especially recommendable when evidence suggests that the counterparty's expectation that the party only would sign the contract was reasonable. In the example you outline, the employee's unilateral alteration of the compensation/rate in the contract seems unlikely to favor the employee's position. That is because typically employer and employee negotiate compensation prior to formalizing their agreement. In that case, the employee would need stronger evidence with which to overcome the employer's credible argument that he did not knowingly accept the altered rate.
I assume that you arranged a contract with some company which paid the contractor the full amount, and not you have to pay that company. If you stop paying the finance company, they will initiate legal proceedings against you to make good on your obligation, and that won't affect what the contractor does. It might not hurt you to write a formal letter (no phone calls) to the contractor stating that you require them to complete the job by some date certain, and hope that you won't have to take the matter to court. If you decide to write the letter yourself, you want to avoid saying anything that could be held against your interest, for example "I don't care how crappy a job you do, I just want this job done!": you need to be sure that what you say in a letter does not put you at a legal disadvantage. The best way to guarantee that is to hire an attorney to write the letter. If you want your money back (plus interest), you will almost certainly need to hire an attorney to write the letter. It is possible that there is an arbitration clause in your contract, requiring you to settle disputes with the firm Dewey, Cheatham &amp; Howe. In that case, your attorney might not be able to do much for you. There cannot be a clause in a contract that penalizes you simply for hiring an attorney.
Yes I would reach the same conclusion as DaleM, i.e. that the arbitration clause still applies to the dispute in the question, but for a different reason.&lt;1&gt; While the severability principle is indeed a concept in arbitration law, I don't believe that is the relevant doctrine here.&lt;2&gt; Termination Of Employment v. Termination Of An Employment Contract What terminates when a period of employment ends is the employment itself, not the contract of employment. The contract remains effective as to rights and obligations arising during the course of the employment covered by the contract. (This concept would also sometimes be described in terms along the lines of &quot;the right to a remedy for the workplace injury and the right to have disputes related to that resolved in arbitration are vested rights&quot; that are not modified when the contract term of employment ends.) This concept isn't particular to the arbitration obligation. For example, if contract of employment that did not contain an arbitration clause provided that the employee was paid $200 an hour for the first six months and $220 an hour for the second six months of a one year fixed term employment agreement, but the employer failed to adjust paychecks according after the first six months and continued paying the employee at $200 an hour instead (assume to avoid the issue of waiver that this wasn't readily apparent on the face of the paystubs provided to the employee), the employee could bring suit thirteen months after the employee's employment terminated for the $20 an hour not paid as agreed during the last six months of the contract even though the employment period had ended. The contract still remains in force to govern the rights and obligations of the parties arising during the period of employment. Examples Of Termination Of The Contract Itself In contrast, sometimes one contract is replaced, even retroactively, with another contract, in what is called a &quot;novation&quot; of the original contract. This truly does terminate the old contract, so that only the replacement contract remains. So, if, for example, the original employment contract contained an arbitration clause, but this was replaced by a new employment contract without an arbitration clause three months later (in the sample case, before the worker was injured&lt;3&gt;), then the arbitration clause would not apply because the contract, and not just the employment was terminated. Similarly, support that the workplace injury was the second dispute between the employer and employee that had come up. The first was a dispute over the rate of pay received which was resolved by a settlement agreement negotiated by lawyers for the parties before either arbitration or litigation in court was commenced, which expressly terminated all rights, known and unknown, of the parties arising under the contract, and the second was the workplace injury for which the relationship of the injury to work was only discovered later on. In this case, the contract and not just the employment had been expressly terminated, and so the arbitration clause would not apply to the workplace injury dispute (which would be barred by the settlement agreement and which may or may not have had an arbitration clause of its own). End Notes &lt;1&gt; At least assuming that the dispute would have been subject to arbitration if a dispute were litigated while the employee was still employed. There can be circumstances when a workplace injury is not subject to arbitration even if the employer and employee undoubtedly agreed to an arbitration clause that applies to the dispute in question. For example, workplace injuries arising from sexual assault are not subject to arbitration in the United States. See 9 U.S.C. §§ 401-402. &lt;2&gt; The severability principle usually concerns a determination of the enforceability of an arbitration clause in the face of certain kinds of arguments that the entire contract as a whole is voidable. It also does not apply in cases where there is a dispute over whether any contract of any kind was formed in the first place. For example, if someone presented the court with a contract containing an arbitration clause and sought to compel arbitration, and the defense to a motion to compel arbitration was that the defendant had never met or had any connection with or communication with the defendant or anyone related to the alleged contract. &lt;3&gt; The hard case, where the novation takes place after the injury, is complicated by legal doctrines regarding the conditions under which a vested legal right can be waived, which may or may not be met depending upon the circumstances under which the novation was entered into by the parties and presents conceptually distinct legal questions in addition to the legal questions already present in the simple case where the injury takes place after the novation.
IANAL, and as @GeorgeBailey suggests, you should ask one. That said, some aspects of your question are directly addressable with what we know. Does US law states anything about this? Yes. Federally this falls under the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. §2511. Workplace monitoring generally falls under either the "System Administrator Exception" or under Consent. In general, continuing past a banner constitutes consent. Does company policy enforcement with such a warning over ride the right to not be subject to surveillance? In general, yes. You don't need to use the companies network if you don't want to consent - and they don't need to hire you if you don't want to use their network. But it's their network, and their rules apply. There are some nuances, and courts have found that the wording of the notice has made a difference in some cases, but overall, if the systems are properly posted with banners, then the employer may capture communications. See the "Bannering and Consent" section of this article from cybertelecom.org, e.g.: Even if no clicking is required, a user who sees the banner before logging on to the network has received notice of the monitoring. By using the network in light of the notice, the user impliedly consents to monitoring pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(c)-(d). Note that stored data is covered by different laws than communications. It's a nuance. Is it ethical to sniff all the data without giving any other warning than the logon banner? "Ethical" is a very different question than "Legal", and largely more subjective. Most employers require signed consent for monitoring as a condition of employment, and use banners thereafter. That is ethical by my definition, in that it meets or exceeds the requirements of the law, and does not mislead or use subterfuge. The tone of your question suggests you find it distasteful, and therefore probably it violates your personal code of ethics.