Employment/Contractor Law

The job I'm interviewing for is supposedly a full-time contract, with no benefits. No mention of limited duration was made.

When I made my contract proposal here at my current job, the outgoing CEO expressed the concern that it might not be legal to have me on a contract if they were my only, or practically my only source of business. Essentially, my impression was that if it is a contract position of indefinite duration, I need to have significant income from other customers, or they would be responsible for the taxes paid on a normal salaried job (and possibly, legally responsible for giving me benefits).

Anyone know how this particular legal foo works in Canada/Ontario, or know where I could look it up?

Wet Spots and Jobby Musings

Wet Spots

I went to see the Wet Spots last night and they were even better than I had imagined. And hot! I'd definitely do them (both of them!).

If you are queer, poly, slutty, kinky, or simply amused by ribald, sexy humour, I highly recommend checking them out, although the clips on their site do not do them justice. http://www.cassking.com/wetspots.html

Over the next few months they'll be making appearances in Vancouver, Seattle, Olympia, Portland, San Francisco, Hollywood, LA, Santa Barbara, and Ottawa. Fit them into your schedule; you won't regret it.

Job musings

I'm really struggling with What Ifs. I know I don't have job offers from either job. But.
I really want the Science Educator job at the OSC. But their app deadline is July 12 iirc, which means they may not even start interviewing until mid July. The job has other cons, of course: harder to travel, and tough to find the time to freelance. But I'm fucking tired of being poor, and I'd really love to have a job I love that gives me tons of financial wiggle room. This would do that.

metalana expressed concerns that it is too large an increase and that I wouldn't be able to handle it. I'm not at all worried about that. In the writing business, salaries are more than a little wonky. Doing actual journalism pays crap or below average, and that's what I've been doing. A similar job doing PR or Public Information work (which this is) often pays 1.5 -2 times more. For instance, an entry level journalism job will pay between 20 and 30 K. An entry level PR/PIO job will pay between 38 and 45K.

I've also been essentially underpaid since October 2002. Straight out of university, I had a cushy internship that would have amounted to ~$35K USD/year. Then I was unemployed for 9 months until I got the WIRED internship. That only amounted to about 21K/year, but I was just glad to have a good internship that gave me steady income. After that I did the teaching job, which paid 16K-20K depending on the year. Then I moved back to Canada and got this job (30K).

So, long story short (too late for that!), I am confident that I can handle this job (and this raise).

But anyway, about the job for which I actually have an interview today... Let's say they give me 27K. I lose health insurance, which costs around the same as my TTC pass, so call that even. With the freelancing I've been doing for XTRA, I've been making about 33.5K. That gives me about 6.5K to make up. But I'm moving somewhere cheaper, and even before this came up I was shooting for a rent reduction of about $200/month, which comes to about 2.4K.

That means I would have to come up with 4K in freelance revenue over the course of the year. Given that I'd have another 2-3 hours (commute + lunch hour) to play with during the day, that amounts to needing to make or save $7.70/hour during those 2 hours (I'm not counting lunch), or about $80/week, or about $330/month. That's two skating lessons per week, or one medium story to the Star, or one short story to somewhere like Discover or WIRED.

I can do that! The real question is, can I do better than that, since I don't want to keep on squeaking by. I think I can... an extra 10-15 hours per week of free time is a lot!

I still think I'd rather the OSC job, though. Which brings me back to the dilemma, what if I get an offer from these guys before I know what's up with the OSC job? *sigh*