Comment by tamimio

> remove it then the organisation is inflexible and the people who are hiring me have no power within it

Bingo. That’s my assessment as well, usually this stage is where any company tries to show their best behavior, good way to filter out the bad ones. But surprisingly it’s getting very common, contracts used to be before a one pager stating the salary and some other benefits, right now it’s a submission contract, and setting up the power dynamics before you even do anything. Another contract I turned down was also full of questionable clauses (like you should work more than 48h a week when needed, overriding the common law with maximum 48hrs, and up to interpretation: “needed”), and none of the benefits discussed were written there, not even a reference to XYZ internal policy or similar, meanwhile, they had so much written against you not just while doing the work but even after you leave, that they could ruin your future career if they chose to. I believe there should be a federal centralized system govern these contracts and ensure each contract is in compliance, easy to implement by having a contract builder that add clauses to it while giving margin to each party to customize other clauses to their liking. Otherwise, a lot of people will get exploited, that contract I had with that company they refused to change anything justified by it being a “template”.. it doesn’t feel like a contract anymore since contracts are made to be negotiated, it feels like signing up for a SaaS service where if you don’t agree to the entirety of it, you are out, except for jobs you’re not the customer.