Most people go into new jobs with certain expectations. Most of those expectations boil down to the understanding that their employer will not try to screw them over.

Sometimes, those expectations don't get met. Sometimes the employee gets the raw end of the deal, while the employer gets away with things they definitely shouldn't.

This isn't just my story of having to deal with Idiot Employers. This is the story of every other employee who worked with me and who found themselves screwed over in exactly the same way. This is for them, and for the people who may someday find themselves facing the same crap I am and who want advice on how to deal with it. This is for people who suddenly needed, need, or will need to find out what their rights are as employees, because rarely does anybody actually know.

 My previous job was a pretty sweet one. Working overnights by my self, listening to music if I wanted to, making good use of my skills. I couldn't have asked for a better job, really, and even the bad parts weren't as bad as some things I've had to deal with in the past.

But then came the phone call. The phone call that said, "By the way, the company's bankrupt and you no longer have a job."

We were all stunned. We knew the company had been having some financial problems lately, mainly due to the recession, but things were picking up. I've seen advertisements on the local job bank website for new employees. Somebody new had been recently hired, even. All signs indicated that things were looking up for the company.

Apparently the owners didn't see it that way.

So all of a sudden we found ourselves unemployed, and worried about the state of our futures. I, for one, found the whole thing a little fishy, though. For one thing, the co-owner of the company had a habit of saying hello to me in the mornings just before I went home, and that morning had been no exception. He said nothing to me then about the company, except to make a joke about calling me to wake me up, since I slept during the day. (Working overnights will do that to you.) He called me to tell me this information at conveniently the time that he mentioned in that little joke, something that stuck out in my mind later on.

He knew. He knew very well that he'd be calling people that day. I even asked him, when he called, what brought this all on so suddenly, and he told me that it hadn't been sudden at all. This had been coming for months, he said.

Months. But no attempts to really increase the company's income or reduce expenses. Hiring new employees anyway. No cutbacks in hours, even. Business as normal, except for slightly less work than we'd all expected for that time of year.

This was all bad enough. Then came the real kicker. The co-owner of the company, somebody who from here on will be referred to as W, sent around an email to all his former employees, saying that he was sorry, but we wouldn't be paid for any time worked since the last pay period. Oh, and our banked vacation pay wouldn't be paid out either. The company apparently had no money to pay us with.

That was the last straw. I was livid. Iranted for hours to anybody who would listen, that I had signed no papers saying that I agreed to work for free in case of financial difficulties. I had worked 40 hours between the last pay period and the company closing. 40 hours. A week's pay. I was not being screwed out of a week's pay!

It was at that point that I started to research my rights. I was certain they couldn't withhold pay from us like that, not when we'd worked for it. And in my research, I also came across another fascinating little tidbit of information. Any employee who has worked for longer than 6 months was entitled to 2 weeks notice of job termination, or else they get 2 weeks pay-in-lieu. An employee who has worked for more than 5 years gets 4 weeks notice or 4 week pay-in-lieu. What that essentially meant was that because they didn't give us 2 weeks notice, they owed us 2 weeks of pay anyway.

Ironically, it would have been better for them to give us 2 weeks notice. They would have had to pay us for that amount of time anyway, but they could have kept drawing money from their clients during those final 2 weeks instead of drawing no money at all.

I shared the information I found out with others, and was happy to discover that I wasn't the only one with the gumption to look up my rights.More than one of us decided to file claims with the Labour Board against this company.

This made me acutely aware of two things. The first was that, judging from the reactions of others, the likely goal of the company was to shock us all into not fighting for our money. They were counting on us being too frantic trying to find a new job to stop and go, "Wait, something isn't right here." When I mentioned this to others, they agreed with me, and said that had been their reaction until others started passing around the info that we didn't have to stand for this.

The second thing I became aware of is that very few people actually know their rights as employees. We know we have the right to be paid, to request fair wages, and to be paid extra when we work overtime or on holidays. But beyond that, most people know nothing about their rights as employees, and what their employer is legally obliged to do for them. If you're even the slightest bit unsure about your rights, I urge you to research them. You'd be surprised at what employers try to do under the assumption that nobody will know they aren't allowed to do it.

So the claim was filed, by multiple people. And we were told, shortly after, that the Labour Board had placed holds on the company bank accounts, meaning that any money that went into the account got transferred straight to the Labour Board so that we, the employees, could be paid before any other debt was paid. This contented people, for the most part.

A day or so after we found this out, W sent out another email, saying that he would actually pay us what we were owed, and that we'd be paid first, before any other company debt. He made the email sound conciliatory, like he was doing us a favour and being nice to us. Most of us knew better. Most of us knew he was only doing this because he'd been made to do it. He said it might be a while, though, because the company truly was bankrupt and they'd have to sell off all their assets to pay us.

I didn't care. I didn't care if they paid us each $20 a week from paycheques they earn by flipping burgers. I wanted them to feel the responsibility that they tried to avoid. I wanted them to pay us each what we were due.

 I received word the other day that the owner of the old company, whom I shall call C, now has a new company started up. She's got a new bank account with a different bank, a new line of credit thanks to a co-signer. She's hired a new call centre in a nearby city, one that's already been established, and so most of the money made from this new venture goes straight into her pocket. She was quoted as having said that she's sleeping easy with a clear conscience, because she thinks she did everything she could to forward job information to us after the old company closed down.

Clear conscience my behind!

This has, of course, been reported to the Labour Board too. Unfortunately, we've been told that the only way for them to get money from this new company is if C registers it under the same registry number as her old company. Otherwise, she can keep making money and shirk her responsibilities. The old company name got sold, but under a deal where she gets paid nothing for the first 3 months, then gets installments over a 5-month period, so it looks like it'll be January 2010 at least before we get the money owed to us.

To me, this sounds like she's trying to drag everything on long enough for people to forget about it all and give up on getting what we're supposed to get.

What I'd like to do is find out the name of her new company, and take that info to a lawyer, to see if something like this could be taken to court. If she's trying to dodge her debt like this, in addition to initially trying to not pay us (which she would have followed through on had we not reported it, after all), all while she's making enough money from a new company, then something needs to be done, and in all honesty, I'm willing to resort to legal procedings to get it.

C and W have caused me a good deal of stress, waiting for my pay, wondering if it will come, trying desperately to find a new job to pay the rent and bills. Right now, I'm just barely scraping by, financially. My health has been worse of late, partially because of the stress I'm under and partially because due to an insurence fiasco (also caused by W and incompetant financial handling), I wasn't able to afford the medication I needed for quite a few months. In a society that sues companies for the most ridiculous reasons, I personally think I have quite a few legitimate complaints here!

I don't want to get rich off this incident. I'm not out for more money than I'm due. I want what I earned, my banked vacation pay, my pay-in-lieu, and maybe some compensation for putting me through this crap. But most of all, what I want is to teach C and W a lesson. I want them to learn that they can't treat people this was and get away with it. I want them to learn what responsibility means, and I want them to feel the bite of having to follow through on their responsibilities even when it's not much fun to do so. I want them to remember this incident the next time they ruin a company (this is, I believe, the 4th company that W has helped run that has gone bankrupt), there will be people who will fight back against injustice, and who will fight for what they deserve.

Not too much to ask, is it?