Friday, April 12, 2019

A very good example of Contractual Employment Case

Contractual employment is ok for short term employment but when it is renewed several times, that's when things changes and violation of employer can occur. Contractual employment is a threat to economic stability for obvious reasons. And when an employer keeps on renewing but do not offer regular employment, that employer is a scammer. Still in the IT industry, a lot of these agencies offers contractual employment because they are being paid by a bigger scammer, the scammer who only want to enrich themselves by amassing a lot of revenues derived from the works of programmers. These agencies may not aware of the these facts or they are aware but not scared because they know someone which is obvious from the case outcome I filed.

A good example is the case of FUJI TELEVISION NETWORK, INC vs ARLENE S. ESPIRITU. you may view the details of the case here. The power to control which is essential in the 4 fold test of employee-employer relationship include to employer's power to deduct absences from salary or any other forms like in this case of fuji:
Fuji has just affirmed that Arlene was their regular employee. This is the same in my case, if I am late, agency will deduct each minute of late and I have no-work, no-pay arrangement no benefits whatsoever.. Agency controlled how they will pay me and I have no bargaining rights. Arlene had bargaining rights, she can demand that her salary be increased every time they renewed her contract. Her contract is being renewed on a yearly basis. My contract is being renewed every thee months. Arlene enjoyed a lot of economic benefits and still she won the case, she even won her case at the NLRC when she filed her first MR(Motion for Reconsideration). Fuji does no deny they don't have employee-employer relationship which is obvious in the screenshot above, but my agency deny it, and NLRC obviously affirmed it but the Court of Appeals reversed it.

I wont give any conclusion, this is just my analysis and opinion. I hope and pray the people who handle my case will see the case of Arlene and compare it to mine. My case is a lot worse than hers and yet she won.

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Should the Contract be Dictated By One Party?

I was applying for a job(the job posting was in jobstreet a website for job seekers not contractors) and during the interview, the interviewer asked me if I could accept project based position(why would she initiate this? I would assume their job posting was a scam because they were looking for contractors not employees.), I was desperate to find a job because I had no money so I said yes but if I had money I could have replied if terms of the contract is acceptable to both parties then why not. This is already a habit of the agencies/IT companies to offer project based positions when the advertisement did not mentioned it. Legitimate Programming jobs is history because it is being blocked by these agencies/IT companies. And because of this, programmers are of the same ranks with janitors. To restore the prestige enjoyed by being a programmer is to eliminate the existence of thises agencies. Purging must start immediately. PROGRAMMERS help in the improvement of operational efficiency and reduction of operational cost. Processes that were used to take several days (and 24hours of operation) to finish can already be done in a few minutes. And with the introduction of SAP, all processes within a huge corporation can already be certified as highly accurate and because of this, more investors are willing to pour in their capital because of these trustworhy operational processes.

In order for an IT company to be recognized as IT company should develop it's own products not just because it has clients who asked them to create such a product. Companies that develop products on a contract basis provides unstable and unsecure job opportunities. A third world country like the Philippines should discourage or ban these companies from operating in the country. If you try to search jobstreet, companies like these are all over some like company with accentuation even have like 30 to 40 ads for the same position not to mention the other companies offering the same position and their client is company of accents. And most applicants came also from this company of accentuation. Or the company that started from a garage and the striped blue who's managers passes on full photo-copied versions of books. A legitimate IT company is like Microdoft,  SAP, Oracle.

Let's go back to the first topic...I had observed that saying yes immediately can have catastrophic effects. Companies are abusive and always takes advantage of the situation. So for the past 6 months, when a prospective recruiter calls me, I immefiately ask them if their client is an agency or end user. For me, knowing this fact could immefiately determine the scamming schemes of this  IT comanies/agencies.

Here are my plans if ever I am offered a contractual position and both agreed that the terms of contract are acceptable to both parties:
1) The contract price for short term engagements is Php1M. Why? This is to dicourage these scammers from proceeding with their evil plans.

2) If they agreed on the first condition, my next term is that a security and non refundable deposit should be immediately paid which is equal to a of minimum 50% of contract price. This should discourage the scammer from offering fake job openings. I had experienced several times that I would discover that upon accepting the job offer, and reporting on the first day,  there is really no job opening, they just want to waste my time. This is even not the worst, I heard that others after being trained , they will be informed that the project was cancelled.

3) If the prospective client agreed on the 1st and 2nd conditions, my third term is client should pay double during idle times. And should there be idle times for 3 consecutive days should be considered breach of contract and therefore client should pay the ramaining unpaid contract price plus 50% penalty.

And if client still agrees with this, then it is time to scrutinize the educational background, track record, ask gor sample outputs such as sample technical documentation.These are important, because my last client had these teams that were having 90%  inaccuracy suggesting that it was a scam. The manager even keeps on saying he is not contented with the output but he did counted how many revisions he asked me, he did not counted how may errors he had. And one team member would change critical settings without informing me which results in a lot of errors. I am quite puzzled because during the early stages, he would inform everyone that he had finished his part and advices me to proceed. So he knows the the consequences of his actions if he makes changes without my knowledge. Not to mention the gay local manager who is in the loop of email exchanges does not even do anything, it is either he is an illiterate or a puppet of the scammers. It was really a rediculous project and should have reported the incidence to proper authorities but decided not to but should I encounter a similar situation, I really should do it to get rid of such evil elements and prevent them from victimizing poor prople like me.