Just curious if anyone has been asked to return an original contract to their school upon completing the contract. There is a clause in my contract that says I must return my original contract in order to be paid my last month of wages. This sounds weird, and somehow wrong to me. The only reasons I can think a school might request this is: A. Protect their contract from being copied by another school or B. Something in the contract might not comply with Taiwan labor laws. Anyway, just curious if anyone else has been requested to do this.
At my school I wasn’t even allowed to keep my contract while I was working, as I remember. They kept it to make sure it was “safe”. From me, presumably.
I’ve also been asked to give back housing contracts - I managed to keep the most recent one by smiling and lying through my teeth, which was useful since they had just lied to me about what some of the Chinese in it said in order to keep more of my deposit. To the tax office with that one.
Make a copy and then give back the original.
I imagine that the reason the other party would want the contract back is so that you cannot take any legal action in the future. If you don’t have the original contract, then you have no admissable edvidence that you had a contract with them. I would never give a contract back.
I second Jive Turkey’s opinion.
Agreed. You are entitled by “law” (such as it is) to keep your contract.
Cannot take the contract off the school grounds “…but you are welcome to come and read it in the office…any time!”
I don’t think this is that unsual. One school I worked at in the SOuth would barely let me read my contract after I signed it let alone even take it home. Come to think of it, when I asked to see it a couple of times my boss contstantly maoned and groaned about how hard it would be to go back and find it because she wasn’t sure where it was. That school never was much good about any of the “rules”. It is even blacklisted on buxiban.com. Anyway, my school now copied it for me right after I signed it and I have it safely tucked away for me to review at will.
I agree with other posters. Don’t worry about it. Copy it and give it back.
Photograph the original with a film camera in front of them so they know you have the negative.
If a boss wouldn’t let me take the original contract, that would be a big enough red flag to me that perhaps I shouldn’t be signing it in the first place.
[quote=“jwbrunken”]Anyway, my school now copied it for me right after I signed it and I have it safely tucked away for me to review at will.
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That copy is likely worthless for any legal purposes. If original signatures from both parties are not on the document, then it would not be allowed as evidence in most places. Always demand that both parties sign duplicates and that you get one of them for yourself.
Thanks for the advise JT.
My school freaked out because I asked to have a copy of the work rules. When I started to photocopy them because they only had one copy in the school 
, the inner lines were ringing as the message that I had gotten them was relayed to the big boss that I was at the photocopier. I could almost hear her running down the hall.
They demanded that I stop copying the work rules and that they were not to leave the premises. Then when I said I wanted some time to look over them, the question I kept getting asked was “What are you looking for?”. None of your damn business came to mind…
Then the laoban informed the secretary very loudly that she was to go upstairs with me to my classroom and I would be giving the work rules directly to her when I had finished reading what I needed.
Paranoia much? :saywhat:
This same laoban had told the secretary that she was not to leave the upstairs part of the school until I had left when I came to collect a few files off the computer (e-mailed photos of my family that I had cached on the computer and some document files).
This level of trust came after working for this place for five years.
Ironically, the same laoban who made these demands to watch over me constantly had outright telling a vicious lie to my face and then lied again when I confronted her and the subject of this lie face-to-face to learn the real truth.
Gotta love the obsession with face and doing everything in your power to not reveal yourself to be the bad guy, even if it means sabotaging the relationship of two of your employees in the process.
I’m so done with being party to the ugly side of office politics.