Sooooooo… This one is a bit old, but I thought you might enjoy reading about it, especially with all the noise about remote work opening the door to “Near Shoring” positions.
I used to work for a shipping company based in the US. It's a smaller/mid-size company that owns a couple of vessels and ships mainly from FL and NJ.
Turns out that circa 2010, and mainly as a result of the 2008 crisis, their employees decided to unionize. They started to move all admin positions to Latin America, opening their “Hub” in a very specific Central American country. So, every time someone asked for a raise or took too much PTO, their job would be moved to Latin America, paying 1/4 of what these people were making in the US.
Turns out (and I've seen this a lot), US companies seem to believe the entire world is the US, and US rules apply everywhere. Not only that, but they think that “at will” bs is the law. They also seem to rely on people not knowing labor law, but guess what? At this particular place, everyone that goes through high school gets to learn the basics of local labor law, so we know about PTO, Overtime, Termination Rules, etc.
This manager (she was actually a senior manager) was a transfer from the Miami Office and was in charge of “Building up the business unit in LATAM”. They had implemented (out of nowhere) a policy that stated “There can't be more than 2 people from the same department out on PTO at once”.
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, turns out that the department had about 30 people, AND by law, we get to take all of our PTO in a single go (we do this because we have sick leave, paid). Also, PTO is 10 business days. The math doesn't add up, right? There are not enough weeks in a single year to have people leave one at a time.
This manager was one of those people who love to add “ATTENTION, URGENT, PLEASE RESPOND ASAP ASAP” to every single effin email and would monitor your breaks to ensure that you were seated at your desk at least 3 mins before you had to clock in, etc.
So my PTO comes, and 3 days before I'm set to leave, I'm informed that my time off is denied because “there is someone else also taking time off”. So I went to talk to them, and given how I was already tired of their shit, I kinda threw everything at them and listed all the laws they were breaking:
- They were forcing people to take their time off in multiple requests (2 days x 4 times). This is illegal, and they have to give you 1 extra week of PTO every time they force you to interrupt your vacations (this was only happening with a few of the most productive team members)
- Because there are not enough weeks in the year, they were having people carry their time off over to the next year, which is also highly illegal. Not only that, they were delaying the payment (we get 30% as a vacation bonus).
- They were letting people know they had to take their time off with 2 weeks' notice. Local law dictates it has to be 2 months at a minimum, and both parties have to agree.
I was also upset about other things, so why not? I listed those too:
- You are requiring at least 1 hour of PTO a day and making people take turns to work on Saturday. Illegal.
- You are moving people's breaks all over so that there is always someone on the floor. This resulted in people having to take their break at 8 AM and then going 7 hours straight until they were done for the day. ILLEGAL.
- They had “hired temps” and kept them as temps for 2 years (renewing their contract every 6 months). This is totally illegal. Any temp becomes permanent after 6 months, so they owed these people their termination (we get 2 weeks per year every year) and had not paid it.
- People that had to work on their rest day or holiday got the OT paid but didn't get the comp day (If you work a holiday or Sunday, you are entitled to a comp day before the week is over).
The manager had gone quiet, and their eyes were as wide as plates. I'm not pretending this was a mic-drop moment. I hate confrontation, and I'm shy, so I was tearing up because I was super upset. All I got was:
- “None of that is true.”
- Me: “Ask the lawyers, read the law.”
I left for home and went to bed, thinking about moving my plans who knows how many weeks. At 10 PM, I got a message from the manager asking me which dates I wanted to take PTO. Turns out the manager did reach out to HR and Legal, and they DESTROYED them.
Later I found out they had reached out to every member of the team and asked them when they wanted their time off and immediately approved it. They also paid the people that they hadn't paid, and 6 months later they made the temps full-time (this I don't know if they were planning to do anyways).
Apparently, this manager had been “Managing” without knowing shit about local law, and nobody had realized how much they were at risk of a lawsuit or having their org shut down.
About a year later, I left that shithole (after 7 years), but at least my nervous breakdown achieved something, I guess?
And that's it. There are downsides to “offshoring” jobs, that companies not always know about until it becomes an issue.
P.S. Also, I found out about 2 years ago that they had a huuuuge lawsuit in a different country because one of the drivers assigned to the American managers had run over a couple trying to board a taxi, and the local office had ignored it until it got out of control (Police was coming after the Legal Representative for that branch).