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Comment by worble | Hacker News Reader

I don't know exactly how it works in the states, but I'm assuming you still sign a contract when accepting a job? That contract has all sorts on it, often including job title, expected responsibilities, work hours, etc.

If a company decides to change that then you must agree to the new contract, or they risk legal action. If you don't then their options are keep you where you are or fire you, and of course firing someone is it's own minefield, as shown here.

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Contracts? In the states? Haha.. that's a good one.

Wait what? No employment contract?? Can you unpack this a little bit?

I uh… USians don’t do those. When they do, it tends to be a one-sided kind of thing to protect the company’s interests—NDAs, codes of conduct, accept our policies today and whatever we change them to in the future, that sort of thing.

Most places, work happens at the whim of the employer (and, for what little it’s worth, the whim of the employee): employment is “at-will,” states are “right-to-work,” and so on.

Don’t know about others, but I’ve never once in my life signed a contract to work in the US.

Wtf? So how do you know your current salary? How do you know your work hours?

This info often comes in the form of an offer letter that is accepted verbally or in writing.

In most cases employment in the US is at-will and does not involve a formal employment contract: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

Your monetary compensation is in an offer letter you sign to accept the role. Salary exempt status is a fixed value per time period, or separately a hourly rate.

If paid hourly, you're typically entitled to 1.5x pay after 40 hours of work. Salaried exempt status are not mandated overtime pay.

What hours you work depends. Salaried is expecting a job to be done regardless of the hours to complete. Hourly is a mixed bag of "the schedule for next week is posted every Tuesday" (common in restaurants) or routine hours long-term (such as shift work in factories).

It's awkward to try to explain, but here are some pros and cons from other people. https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditForGrownups/comments/16606tt/...

Most tech positions don't have fixed work hours, beyond what's required by the law. The salary, position, benefits, etc. are the part of employment offer that you do sign, and there are employment handbooks etc. that you also acknowledge when you onboard, but from the company side the offer is usually the only document they sign.

You don't sign a contract buying something in the supermarket, yet a contract is still formed. You negotiated or discussed with the employer about pay and responsibilities, of course they are part of any such contract and their option is to dismiss you, not unilaterally change the terms.

This isn't the case even in EU, much less in US where they often don't sign any employment contract.

Regarding the EU thing: maybe I've just had an odd experience, but I've always signed employment contracts. Even when I was a student I had a contract from the company I worked at (it was a separate contract, not the usual student contract that I had to get also).

I can only speak to the UK where I have always been given a employment contract but it appears that something similar is a requirement in the EU

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/employ...

>When you hire staff, you should provide them with a written contract or an equivalent written statement confirming their working conditions

The fact it can be a statement rather than a contract may have an impact on the companies ability to change it at any given time without agreement from the employee, but I'm not an EU employment lawyer

Every company I ever worked for had a "any changes are permitted, refusing means quitting" clause.

That is quite literally illegal where I live. Any annex to the contract (including base salary changes) must be _voluntarily_ signed by the employee. Forcing signing is illegal.

When covid started, my company gave all employees annexes to reduce our pay by 20%, but keep our workload the same. I told 2 bosses, the HR employee and the director of HR mobbing me I will not sign and to piss off. I was the only one to do so out of ~150 employees. I kept my full salary until I quit my job because I don't like working for cunts.

It definitely is the case in the EU. Where did you get the idea it isn't?

In my country, which is in the EU, having someone work for you without a contract is a crime. Because by not having a contract you're denying them rights such as pension contribution, paid vacation, health insurance etc.

Plus you have to pay taxes on salary, so if you hire them "on a handshake" as it were, you're probably doing tax evasion too.

I got the idea from my personal experience where I never was able to refuse what they told me. I'm not saying no contracts, I'm saying that refusing the change means I quit myself, and so no protection.

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