johnnybangkok

I would say every single one of them. Which is quite impressive if you think on it.

Not true; employment contracts are very important in Thailand. Obviously anyone can get fired at any time at any job in any country but Thai employment law is very strict about the notice period money you should be getting paid and is VERY employee biased. You also have a robust system for unfair dismisal and the likes. This is why it's important to get the contract (with agreed notice periods) agreed in advance. If done properly it WILL hold up in an employment tribunial.

You are getting some REALLY bad advice here so let me set a few things straight for you. An employment contract is only valid once you actually start employment so legally, it doesn't matter if it's signed beforehand or on your first date of employment. You cannot be held to a contract (and you can't hold them to a contract) if you aren't working for them. The ONLY time you need a signed contract before you commence work is if you are getting your work-permit via a non-immigrant O visa issued in another country (which is the norm for most jobs as you cannot be issued this visa in Thailand) but since teachers get a non-immigrant B visa, they can apply once in Thailand with the following criteria:- https://hochiminh.thaiembassy.org/en/publicservice/non-immigrant-b-teaching-in-thailand? page=5d80ab3315e39c2fe800a7ab&menu=5d80ab3315e39c2fe800a7ac In your subsequent post you did say 'They want me to get a work visa and then they fly me out' which I assume means at the Thai Embassy in your home country. This is impossible without a either a signed contract or 'Letter of acceptance from the employing institute or school in Thailand'. If I was you, I'd send them the list of requirements for a non-immigrant B visa, as stated in the link I have included here and ask them for all the things that only they can supply (Letter of acceptance from the employing institute or school in Thailand, Letter of approval from government authorities, School license/Business registration, school profile etc) and see what their response is. If they are not willing to provide this then they aren't serious as it's simply impossible to get a visa without this information and therefore their participation. It just might be very possible that they are hedging their bets as far as the contract is concerned or it just might be they have had a bad experience before and just want to make sure you show up before they go ahead with all the other things required (including a signed contract) but by virtue of them asking you to get the visa in advance, it then puts the onus on them to get you everything you need for a successful application (to include a signed contract). Best of luck.

I've got one as well. Fred is the proud owner of the only talking dog in the world 'Rex'. One day Fred sticks $10 in Rex's collar and tells him to go to the local shop to pick up the papers and some groceries. Rex replies 'will do'. 2 hours go by and the dog is nowhere to be seen. Fred goes searching for him and is about to give up when he passes an alley and sure enough, there's Rex in there hunping away at the local 'bitch'. Fred runs up to Rex shouting, 'Rex, what the hell! You've never done this before'. To which Rex replies 'I've never had the money before.'

Lets start with ''Totally unreliable and annoying for us. I dont want to pay her because she hasn't given us any notice. I feel I want to teach her a lesson. What would you do? It will be annoying if she turns up and makes drama demanding her salary.' This is illegal. If she has worked the days/hours then legally you cannot withhold her money. 'They work hard but we pay the well above the norm compared to our competitors. We pay double time if they work on public holidays'. You have admitted in a subsequent post that you think you work them too hard. This could be the problem in a nutshell but easily solveable by hiring more than your usual 5 workers. If for example you hire 7, then you won't have to pay overtime as you do now (therefore halfing the hourly cost) and you will have back-up for when someone doesn't show up for a shift or doesn't return from a family visit. It's just a case of logistics and working out work time-tables and paying people for hours worked rather than for being employed. If done properly, 7 staff need not cost you any more than 5 staff without overtime. The rest of the problem is your attitude. 'I feel living in this third world mentality here in Thailand is wearing me down'. As much as I appreciate how draining all of this can be, no one forced you to open a business in Thailand and I think the least you could have done is try to understand the mentality of your workers. There has been plenty of posters on here giving you solid advice about how to keep low paid staff happy (treat them like family, make yours a fun environment to work in, give them something more than just 'above normal' salaries etc) but perhaps start with your own prejudices and pre-conceived ideas that is making you look VERY negatively on all of this. Start with doing an exit interview for all staff (you can go back as far as 6 months to a year) using a Thai that is NOT related to you nor the business (if you know any HR professional, that would be ideal but it has to be Thai). Then do a similar question and answer session with your current staff. Tell people it is confidential and you are not looking for anything else other than constructive criticism and you'll only be taking up 10 mins of their time. Then ask them questions along the lines of (for ex-staff) :- 1. Why did you leave the position? 2. What could we have done to keep you? 3. What is your thought on the working environment? Was it fun? Did you enjoy the work/people? 4. What would have been the single biggest thing we could have done to keep you employed? 5. What is your view of senior management? You will find that some just didn't care and it wouldn't have mattered what you did but if you ask enough people, you may find a trend that you were just not aware of (working them too hard for example). The point is you are just guessing right now....... so don't. Find out for sure what the problem is as then you are half-way to solving it. It is very difficult to see a problem from within especially when you are so involved yourself and/or feeling as cynical as you currently are. Best of luck and I hope it all works out for you. N.B. I run a recruitment and HR Consultancy business here in Thailand. I employ 54 staff myself but consult many, many companies who have similar problems to your own. Hopefully you will take this advice in the constructive manner it's meant.

I act like I'm 25 so it might be handy to look like I am.

What are you talking about? My posts are about the fossil fuel industry hiring a PR 'genius' to change the narrative on climate change. None of them are scientists but they are all con-men.

I know this. 'Though few outside the PR industry might have heard of E Bruce Harrison or the eponymous company he had run since 1973, he had a string of campaigns for some of the US's biggest polluters under his belt. He had worked for the chemical industry discrediting research on the toxicity of pesticides; for the tobacco industry, and had recently run a campaign against tougher emissions standards for the big car makers.' and also ' the GCC has successfully turned the tide on press coverage of global climate change science, effectively countering the eco-catastrophe message and asserting the lack of scientific consensus on global warming." 'https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62225696

Don't you just love all the climate change deniers chastising everyone else for being 'woke' and 'getting conned' when the exact opposite is true. 'At stake was a contract worth half a million dollars a year - about £850,000 in today's money. The prospective client, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) - which represented the oil, coal, auto, utilities, steel, and rail industries - was looking for a communications partner to change the narrative on climate change'. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62225696 You are the end result of simple but effective PR and marketing campaign sponsored by the very people that would commercially gain from yours and everyone elses scepticism.

I think you should have at least the common decency to read my whole post before you 'simply decided to ignore the rest'. Not much point debating someone who can't even do this.

You have pretty much answered your own question here. No one is denying the survival rates but what we are debating is the reasoning. You are infering that women are choosing to carry a child for 6 months and then all of a sudden thinking 'you know what, I don't think I fancy this after all." It's a ludicrous proposition perpetuated by the religous right and obviously working on you. The VAST majority of women get abortions at less than 12 weeks. Again I will quote UK figures as this is the benchmark I am using but I think you will find it similar for the US and other developed countries. 'The proportion of abortions that are performed at under 10 weeks has continued to increase since 2010. In 2020, 88% of abortions were performed under 10 weeks, increasing from 82% in 2019 and 77% in 2010. In comparison, abortions performed at 10-12 weeks decreased from 9% in 2019 to 6% in 2020. The percentage performed at 20 weeks and over decreased from 2% in 2019 to 1% in 2020. The legal limit for a woman having an abortion is 24 weeks gestation. This is the point at which the fetus is viable outside the mother's body. Abortions may be performed after 24 weeks in certain circumstances, for example, if the mother's life is at risk or the child would be born severely disabled. Abortions where gestation is 24 weeks or over account for a very small number of abortions (0.1% of the total). There were 236 such abortions in 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2020/abortion-statistics-england-and-wales-2020 Your 15 weeks cut-off is used in 94-97% of abortions, so the only reason to allow it after this time is in what I said in my original post which is serious medical concerns such as fetal anomalies or maternal life endangerment. Of interest to you might be that the UK used to have a 28 week period but this was cut to 24 weeks in 1990 when advances in detection meant there was no need to have a woman wait as long as 28 weeks to find out if there was a problem with her unborn child. In other words, medical professionals used their expertise to assess the situation and continue to do so. There is no room for religous views in this matter, nor indeed politicians who are skewing the optics to fit their agenda. You are being fed (and falling for) propoganda that is infering that women are going around killing their perfectly viable babies at 23 weeks for no other reason than a lifestyle choice. This is simply not true and again I would suggest the lowering of the time to 15 weeks is a gradual erosion of scientifically sound evidence in favour of an increasingly confident religous right who's sole objective is to have an outright ban on abortions.

Abortion is actually illegal in Germany but is 'tolerated' up to 12 weeks. Many medical professionals have been trying to change this for quite some time. In France its 14 weeks but again I would say this is almost entirely down to the fact that Germany is staunchly christian and France is catholic (and I think we all know the catholics stance on abortion). In either case it s not the established MEDICAL concensus that is being accepted but politicians trying to cater to a religous base. You will see this trend throughout the world where sound medical advice is sidelined in favour of religous bias, with the extreme being countries like Iraq, The Philipines, Palestine, Senegal, Andorra, Haiti, Republic of the Congo, Egypt etc with complete bans. As I've stated already, religion should not govern law but unfortunately in too many countries it already does.