I was due to start working a new temporary contractor job on Monday with a company through a staffing agency. The agency sent over a contract to sign, in addition to normal legalese, the first clause on the contract stated that employees weren't allowed to discuss wages with other employees. Now, I'm currently taking an Employment Law class as I get my Bachelor's Degree, and I've been part of this sub long enough to know that policies preventing employees from talking about wages are against the law.
Well, I emailed them back last night saying I do not feel comfortable signing a document that by its very nature is illegal. Well, by noon today I still hadn't gotten a response, so I forwarded the email to another employee I'd been working with. His reply was ” Thanks for forwarding this to me as I had not seen it yet. I will be back in touch with you shortly. ” Finally 4 hours later, I got a response saying that they apologized, they sent a very old copy of the contract and meant to send a newer one. Well, how old could this document possibly be, when its been illegal to prevent employees from discussing wages since the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935? I'm sure we can all agree, that the “old contract” was a smoke screen and they had to act fast and edit the contract without the discussion clause as quickly as possible so everything would be set for Monday morning start.
Within those 4 hours, I got a call from a human resources rep at a different company that was looking for someone immediately at 2pm. She and I talked for 10 minutes, then she immediately set up an interview with the hiring manager for 3pm; had the interview and by the end of the interview, I knew I had the job. The hiring manager told me, I had the job and to expect an offer in the next few minutes. Not 60 minutes later, I had completed their personal application, signed the offer letter and had already finished filling out background check information requests.
So the question isn't, which employer do I go with, but how and when should I tell the staffing agency to bite me?