For those of you who may not know, in 2017, in Brazil, there was a labor legislation reform. A lot of new rules gave a lot of flexibility… for bosses.
Among these rules, two are relevant:
- A company can keep you “floating” for 3 months, deciding whether or not you are able to work for them.
- A company is not required to pay you minimum wage per month, if, let's say, your work hours are halved from the usual 8h/day. However, after 1 year and a half, they are legally obligated to pay you minimum wage.
They fired me at month 17. Seventeen months I was working in the art department. I localized about 2 games (which includes redesigning a lot of materials using the original assets, and having to come up my own sometimes), and made the entire art material of a game (box, cards, tokens, handbook, etc). All of this for roughly (converted) 1$/h.
Btw, none of this was included on the job. I was only supposed to create images to post for social media, and for printing. They saw I was a competent artist and decided to take 2-for-1 and let me also work on their board games. I was promised, face to face, that I was gonna get royalties from my work. If the games I helped and/or created art for selled well, I was gonna get extra cash. After roughly one week, the “job plan changed”, and magically, the art for the games got included in my normal hours, meaning I'd no longer get royalties.
And then, 1 month before law required them to pay me 'fairly', they shut me down. Using my worker rights, I got a sort of 'insurance', that guarantees me some money after I'm fired so I have safety to look for a new job (and the value is the same of a regular salary, so I'm finally getting paid minimum wage, after weeks trying to get this done, since this insurance needs a document from the company).
After 6 months, I was asked a 'favor' for the THIRD TIME. I don't know what to feel. I was used, and exploited due to my ignorance and complacency. Then shut down because apparently I was that easily replaceable and didn't deserve minimum wage. Then they come back to me, because either it's a job few people can do well, or they are really used to me being an exploitable idiot. And they even have the audacity to keep pestering me to look into it like I don't have a life.
I don't know, man.