How I messed up: Offer letter pitfalls

Part 9 of the "How I messed up" series where I walk you through a mistake I made in detail ??

Once upon a time, I received an offer letter with a strange typo:

“…effective January 2, 2019 to January 2, 2019”

My start date and end dates were both January 2, 2019. This was for an ongoing position with a one-year probationary period at the University of British Columbia.

So I asked:

1. Does the “end date” mean the end of the probationary period and did they mean January 2, 2020?
2. Or since it’s an ongoing position and not a term position, should the “end date” even exist?

The response confirmed that my first interpretation was correct: the “end date” meant the end of my probationary period and that my appointment can be extended after my performance review at the end of the year. The offer letter’s typo got fixed so that it said “…effective January 2, 2019 to January 2, 2020.”

I was satisfied with the correction. That was the mistake.

January 3, 2020 — I couldn’t log into anything. I got shut out of all systems at the busiest time of the academic year[1] because I got “terminated” despite a good performance review.

My supervisor and I thought that this was a clerical error. We contacted HR to convert my appointment from a term appointment to an ongoing appointment. Instead, I got a (meager) 1-year extension. This seemed weird, so we contacted the Dean’s office and that was when I learned that the problem was deeper: the Dean’s office said that they never approved my position to be ongoing in the first place.

Again, the position was advertised as ongoing (I took a screenshot). Here I am in a term position. I was not looking for a term position. I was looking for an ongoing position.

So what transpired after this? I’m going off of memory, so I might be mistaken about the details but here’s the gist:

Enter the “quasi-union.” My position was not unionized under CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees). However, it did have an association where the representatives would do collective bargaining with the university and help out with filing grievances. I found it functionally similar to a union so I call it a quasi-union.

The university and my quasi-union ratified a new collective agreement in (I think it was) 2020. Some updates were made to the collective agreement which included the definition of a term employee vs. an ongoing employee. If the employee is hired for a project with a set start and end date, and/or if the funding is from a grant, then the employee would be classified as a term employee. An employee who does not fit those conditions would be classified as an ongoing employee.

• I was not hired for a project; I was hired to manage a 20-year-old program growing more popular than ever.
• The program is self-funded and was not funded by a grant or any resource that would run out.

I contacted my quasi-union, questioning my status as a term employee. My member services representative responded that my position should be reclassified as an ongoing employee and that there were over a thousand (!) misclassification cases.

The quasi-union can’t examine each case (I don’t think they even have 10 staff members). Instead, they said they would bring it up with the university in batches. I put my name on the list of cases for good measure.

I don’t know whether or not this helped at all, but 3.5 years after my unexpected “termination” (and a few more extensions later), my position eventually got converted from term to ongoing. Not much explanation was provided, but it did happen.

I am eternally grateful for my supervisor who advocated for me the entire time and told me that it might be a good idea to reach out to my quasi-union in the first place.

Lessons learned

• In large organizations that use an HR management system (e.g. Workday, PeopleSoft), offer letters are not handmade. They’re generated based on a template. If there is a “typo” in the offer letter, then the “typo” is in the underlying system. I had trouble after my offer letter was “fixed” because January 2, 2019 was the end date in the system.
• Iron out everything before you sign the offer letter.
• If you have a union (or a quasi-union), it’s worth keeping them in the loop even if it looks like they’re not taking any action. Stuff might be happening beneath the surface.
• Take screenshots of the job posting before it disappears into the ether! (I’m glad I did!)

Thank you for reading the 13th issue of “Career Mistakes to Avoid” and part 9 of the “How I messed up” series! I started writing a year ago, worried about running out of ideas. It looks like I'm not running out of ideas any time soon ??

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[1] You might think September is the busiest time for undergraduate academic advisors in North America, but I think January is worse. It’s (theoretically) the final term for 4th year undergraduates, and for some, January is the unfortunate time when they realize they have not fulfilled their graduation requirements.