Background:
I am a graduate student earning my PhD in chemistry. At most research universities, PhD and masters candidates often work as teaching assistants (TAs) because your tuition is reimbursed, you get paid to teach, and you get dirt cheap health insurance. As you progress in getting your degree, your pay rate increases when you hit certain milestones, and there are 3 different salary tiers:
Non-Doctoral: the lowest salary, which every new TA and all masters students earn
Doctoral: only PhD candidates can earn this, which you achieve after taking a certain amount of credits from courses or research
Dissertator: again, only PhD candidates can earn this after they complete all their coursework, and pass a major milestone in research, usually after 3 years.
Now onto the story:
At the end of May, 2017 I reached doctoral status by completing my required course work, or at least I thought I did...(more on that later). I spoke with our department accountant to get my status changed from non-doctoral to doctoral status. She gave me a contract for summer teaching, based on the new doctoral rate.
Summer teaching is from July-August, but we get paid in August and September, essentially we get paid on the first of each month for the previous months work. So as I finished up teaching in the end of August I watched my paycheck in September to make sure I was getting paid the right amount. I ended up finding out I was getting paid based on the non-doctoral rate, instead of the doctoral rate I was supposed to be getting.
I contacted the department accountant and explain the whole situation and she essentially tells me that pay changes don’t take affect until the beginning of the fall or spring semester, and she made a mistake by giving me a contract that said I would get paid at the doctoral rate, when really that pay increase would not start until September 2017. I explain to her that this is a contract that both myself and the department chair signed and I don’t think it’s fair that I completed the work described in the contract, but you’re saying “oops, I made a mistake, and we’re not going to pay you because those contracts aren’t legally binding.”
I became infuriated and walked out and decided I would find someone who could give me a better answer than, “we’re not paying you.” Over the past 5 months I have been speaking to my research advisor, the graduate student chairman, the woman in charge of all TAs in the department, and someone in the letters and sciences who is in charge of payroll for all science departments. No one has been able to help me, I keep getting the “I’ll check into it” response, and no one actually does.
Yesterday I contact another person who is the graduate student affairs coordinator, who is basically the go to person when there are issues with paychecks or benefits( I wish someone had told me about this person sooner). He promptly contacts the payroll/accountant in the chemistry department to have her figure this issue out. At this point I’m happy someone is actually looking into it, but at the same time I’m annoyed because it’s woman who I originally talked to that said she wasn’t going to pay me.
This woman emails me and tell me to stop by her office this morning. I go in and we have a similar argument about the legality of this contract I signed. Trying to defend her position she’s reads part of the contract; “ by singing this you and the university are agreeing to fulfill what is outlined in this document.” So she tells me “this an agreement and not a contract.” I respond “I could write a contract, or an agreement, on a napkin and if you sign it and I sign it, it’s a contract.” I also ask her “ so I’m required to fulfill my part of this contract, but the university isn’t?” No response.
At this point I’m getting angry again because, and correct me if I’m wrong, an agreement is a contract if the two parties sign their names to it. But she then transitions in to telling me that I actually reached the doctoral status at the end of the Fall 2016 semester, and I should have been paid at the doctoral status during the spring of 2017 AND the summer of 2017. So this whole argument about the mistake on the summer teaching contract is now a moot point because I should have achieved doctoral status in the beginning of the Spring 2017 semester, and I am owed for the pay difference, which equates to about $1800 that they now have to cut me a check for. So now, 5-6 months later I am finally getting the money I am owed.
Tl;dr If you think you’re in the right, don’t ever give up when people pressure you to stop fighting. Keep persisting and hopefully you’ll get what you are rightfully owed.
Submitted February 06, 2018 at 12:04PM by newhomelabber http://ift.tt/2EM88ya
