When I started as a teacher I pushed back against my “contract” which I didn’t even see until two months after I started work. In reality, the way employment l

When I started as a teacher I pushed back against my “contract” which I didn’t even see until two months after I started work. In reality, the way employment law works is that the legal “contract” was a statutory one, implicit from the day I started. I started work and they paid me a salary, therefore I was legally an employee. The “contract” was really just the terms and conditions which the employer is required to offer the employee within a certain time period after their start date. In the UK this are called “particulars of employment”, I think. I asked for changes to four of the clauses including IP assignment and me giving the school the right to be the final arbiter for any disputes of damage to pupils belongings. It gave them the right to withhold my pay in order to compensate parents who raise a grievance. So little Johnny could claim I stepped on his laptop and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it if his parents got pissy and demanded I pay. The school was sympathetic and said that of course no such extreme event would ever happen, but I was also told it would cost too much to hire a lawyer to change the document. I said I couldn’t sign it but that I agreed to everything else. They let me work there for several years anyway before I got made “redundant” when they hired a better teacher to take my place. What a bunch of clowns. And that includes me — I should have walked really, but once you start working with kids it’s incredibly hard to let go of the adorable little monsters. One suspects that schools are well aware of this enormous emotional leverage they have.