contractor
posted by Martin C in Germany forum
Hi Amy,
Sorry for late reply, I kind of accidentally ended up on this page as I was interested in renting out a place and I just replied to your question because I thought it was obvious.
Now I do not understand this any more: The first company goes through a second company to hire you but the second company still does not offer you employment??? This does not make sense and is certainly not normal!
The usual problem is that a company is not in a position to offer direct employment to a person and therefore goes thru a provider i.e. Manpower, Adecco, Brunel etc. Then the provider hires the person and so becomes the employer. The person is then sent to the first company and the provider charges a fee to them.This is normal and can happen for a number of reasons. The first company may have a project of limited duration or the head office has imposed an employment stopp etc.
But the important thing is that the provider becomes the employer offering all that is legally required, also paying 50% of your health insurance, offering vacation, etc.
If this is not the case and you still end up as a contractor, there must be a different reason, i.e. you are not on their vendor list or something silly. In that case my advice would be to find a provider offering employment to you and go to the first company through them. This doesn´t make any difference to the first company and it should be really easy to find a provider as you are bringing your client with you. Check out the Yellow Pages in the area and you will find loads of them. Unfortunately, there will be some pretty bad ones also. Try to check the web for references maybe.
It is also possible that we´re getting the translations mixed up, are they talking about a contract in German? Have you seen it? Do you hold a copy? Do you want to anonymize it and let me have a look at it? Or mail to me privately?
Anyway, I do not clearly understand the situation right now and therefore it is difficult to say what to do for visa. With an employment contract it becomes rather