My husband started working as a manager for a music teaching company. He first started as an instructor but had signed a management position contract unbeknownst to me. On the contract it states that he is an independent contractor and not an employee. However, we talked to an employment lawyer and he told us whatever it says on the contract doesn't matter and that he is actually an employee because 1. he gets paid hourly, 2. he doesn't known a business, 3. he goes to work at their store and runs the store like an employee. He is not independent, they give him the hours, they pay him hourly, and he runs their store. Why am I asking for help on reddit if I talked to a lawyer? Well my husband got into an argument last night with the company and there is no legal help on weekends. It is Saturday. The argument was about pay. He is supposed to get paid once a month – as per the contract, not once every two weeks. Few days ago was his supposed pay day. However, they are arguing that since he started in November and that was “training” and training is not paid for – which one of the other managers explicitly said to him “you know you are getting paid for this, right?” when he was getting the supposed “training”, they are saying he will be getting paid in January because he actually started working in December and does not like his attitude. All he said was, “when am I getting paid, it was pay day. I have the rights to receive pay.” My question is – what should we do when we don't get paid in January? Because how do we even know if they will pay us? He told them he quit after the argument. The contract said he needs to give 90 days notice before terminating the contract, find a replacement for his position, and pay for any expenses the company might need to pay to find another employee, etc. Up to $1000. There is no mention of training in the contract. Also, he worked 10 hours a day 6 days a week and everyday they had zoom call meetings once he got home around 9pm. Without even eating dinner, he would tell he that he is running late for the meeting. How can he be late for it when he just got off work and got home? The call lasted for about 2-3 hours ending around 12am, sometimes 1am. We are assuming they will deduct one thousand dollars from his pay if they ever end up paying in January. I am getting the sense that all this independent contract thing is so that they can avoid paying their employees benefits, overtime pay, etc. So if they are so stingy in abiding the law and protecting employee's rights who's to say they will pay? The options that I am aware of so far is 1. File a complaint to employment standards act BC. We are in British Columbia, Canada. 2. Make a small claims case. 3. Hire a lawyer to sue – which is too costly for what we would be getting. I don't know what the best option is. Shortest amount of time to receive the pay and get this resolved is the priority I think. I know all methods are going to take time… I do not know much about small claims case. Can anyone give some legal advice? Husband and I don't know what to do – what is the best action to take. The employers were quite unhappy about my husband mentioning pay and “Are gladly willing to go to court with you, have dealt with the likes of you and never lost a case!”
TL;DR – My husband started working for a music teaching company mid-November. He signed a contact and in the contract it says he is an independent contractor and not an employee. He quit a few days ago after an argument about pay with the employers who are now threatening to go to court with us – according to them they have done it a couple times already and have “never lost.” He has not received his pay on payday and they are saying he will get paid in January because November was training. He is getting treated like an independent contractor and there won't be any overtime pay, pay for training, and is going to get fined $1000 for terminating the contract.
– He also tried quitting before and they told him “No, you can't just quit. This is not like a fast food job where you can just quit. You need to give us 90 days notice and there are fines for terminating the contract up to $1000.”