Minimum wage

Update on my situation with my former employer. At last report, we appeared to be teed up to have me revise the project’s business plan so that the director could show potential corporate sponsors that it has a sustainable and realistic business model. You’ll recall that on that call I told the director what my hourly rate for that work is, and she seemed to think that was workable. (Possibly involving me fudging how many hours I worked to arrive at the monetary total. I was not entirely comfortable with this, but I let it go for the time.)

I hadn’t heard anything from her about moving forward; we were to have met next Monday to discuss what’s needed. So I emailed her reminding her that I haven’t received a contract, which I need before I can start work. She replied that she’s been traveling, and agreed that “we do need to resolve the part time vs on call temp issue…The articulation is not done via contract (which is more appropriate for a vendor) but we do need a statement of what work we need to do and that seems to be more appropriately worked through together.”

She copied JT, the business operations person, so I waited a day before replying and addressing the latter about my stated rate. And then we got to the heart of it in her response: “[Company] is unable to pay you as a consultant for a period of time after you are no longer an employee (typically 1 year). Therefore, our only option is to extend your employment through an on-call temp or temporary employee status. In either status, we are limited to the amount we can pay you based on your salary.” In this case, that would be about 33% of the going rate. And she asked how flexible I am about that.

Well, I thanked her for the clarification, said I’d already discounted my fee to get to the figure I gave them and noted it’s a pity that I can’t help them with what needs to be done. Since then I’ve heard nothing back from either of them.

Here's the thing: when they bring in a non-ex-employee as a consultant to get this stuff done, they’ll pay the hourly fee I wanted; there won’t be any problem with that. (Of course, anyone coming in from the outside is going to need to spend hours getting up to speed on the program and the environment, so it’ll actually cost them more than me doing the job.)

And to be perfectly clear: they’ll pay anyone/everyone else that much to do the job; just not me.

Good luck with that.