unpaid

So! I work, but currently, I'm not being paid. Let me explain.

Our R&D team got broken up last December. My American coworker, upon hearing that he would be assigned to substitute teaching—a job he had long said he'd never go back to—decided to quit. No 30-day notice, nothing. My Korean coworker, a graphic designer, was told he'd be reassigned to a different R&D team, which didn't make him happy. My boss, who was on contract, was told he'd simply be let go: his contract would not be renewed. I was supposed to be assigned to yet another R&D team in the company (we have several such teams), so in December, dissatisfied with the situation, I turned in my formal 30-day notice of resignation, naming January 20 as my final day. All of this motivated my boss to speak directly with our CEO and to fight hard to get as many of us as possible back together. The boss squeezed certain concessions out of the CEO, including supposedly getting me a raise.

Our HR department maintained contact with me via email as all of this was happening. In our initial conversations, it was determined that I would receive my final payment on January 16 and my severance pay (one month's pay per year of work, so this would be 4.5 months' pay for 4.5 years' work) on January 20, the cutoff day I'd given in my resignation letter. I was expecting to get a salary payment reflecting work through January 20, but I was paid up through the end of January—a surprisingly generous gesture. Severance didn't arrive on the 20th, but it came a few business days later and was also more generous than I'd anticipated.

That was the last time I was paid anything.

I'm not writing any of this out of anger. I kind of knew something like the current situation was going to happen, and the current situation is that HR has not drawn up a new contract,* so there's no formal arrangement about income. My understanding is that the company sees me as having resigned, but I am now "back" as a freelance worker. Being a freelance worker now, I will no longer receive certain benefits like severance pay or health insurance.** (The company will, however, continue to cover my housing, which is a relief even if I don't understand why this is happening.) Since I got the over-20-million-won windfall in January, I feel that I can chill for up to two months, maximum, before I need to get antsy about being paid. I also expect that, when a contract is drawn up, the contract will be back-dated to February 1 (remember, I got paid through the end of January), and I will receive pay for all the days I never stopped working since January 31. I think that's reasonable.

For the moment, then, I have no income despite all the work I never stopped doing. I can laugh about the situation for now, but if this continues beyond two months, I'm once again going to have to consider leaving the company. My boss credits my stubbornness with motivating him to fight to get our team back (we got back everybody but my American coworker, who left too suddenly and angrily to be brought back). I might have to go diva one more time to get a contract hammered out. I don't mind being seen as the bad guy forcing events to move forward. If pressure is needed, I'll apply whatever pressure I can as someone low on the totem pole. And we'll see what happens from there.

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*To clarify: HR did present us with a contract in Korean, which my Korean-fluent boss read through and scoffed at because the language in this contract was so ridiculously anti-labor and pro-management, with all sorts of penalties lying in wait for even minor infractions, that the boss decided he would reject the contract outright and not do anything further, i.e., he'd turn this into a waiting game. I understand that the boss is trying to make a point by doing this, but this makes us employees into collateral damage because we're not being paid while the boss and HR play chicken. So in effect, HR has not presented us with a mutually satisfactory contract as of yet. We're just hovering over Square One.

**I am now on a national health-insurance plan, with an insurance card and everything.