[ahp]

> The contract was presented to me on paper and in Portuguese, 7 pages in total. The only thing I understood was the caption, 'Contrato de Trabalho'. At the time no one said anything about being able to break the contract without reasonable cause before 3 months had passed.

This is pretty appalling. I don't think the burden is on the offerer to explain the contract in full to you. I feel bad for you, but you kind of shot yourself in the foot on that one.

[rtpg]

I don't know if this is common practice, but in Japan when I got an appartment for the first time, I was brought into a room where there was the real estate agent, the contract I was supposed to sign, and another person.

This last person went through the entire contract and explained in layman's terms what each section meant. Considering I'm close to illiterate in Japanese (though I could decipher enough to realise the part that says "you can leave so long as you give 1 month's notice"), I pretty much trusted the guy on what he was saying, but I imagine it's a nice service to have.

Considering that startups are often talked about like a sort of second family sense, the fact that some sort of deception happened on the employment contract is good cause to not want to ever associate with such a startup.

If the founders knowingly presented a contract that he couldn't possibly understand without an explanation, then this seems to be an abuse of trust, plain and simple.

[stale2001]

Obviously the employee made some mistakes, he even admits to this. Thats not the point. The point is that Unbabel acted horribly to its employee and acted in bad faith pretty much ever step along the way.

People keep thinking this situation should be about contracts and lawyers and staying silent to help his case in a lawsuit or something. The employee know full well that he is never going to get fully paid for the contract. So he decided to let other people know how bad this company is so others can know about it. This is the best way to punish a company that acts in bad faith.

[walshemj]

Providing an unreadable (to the person signing) contract violates the principals of natural justice for one.

[CaveTech]

It's not unreasonable when it's written in the official language of the country in which your office resides.

[rcruzeiro]

Since they know that the employee didn't speak the language, they could have provided him with an English translation of the contract (specially since the startup is itself a translation service).

To be fair, the employee should have asked for a translated contract upon being presented with one in a language that he doesn't understand.

[walshemj]

So it all right to rip of foreigners then or people not versed in employment law.

Foolish or badly advised people still have rights you know

[CaveTech]

A foolish person would sign a contract in a language that they can't read. No reasonable employer would be offended if you refused to sign an agreement you couldn't possibly understand.

If they were offended, that would be even more of a reason not to work there or sign it.

[hepaminondas]

Spot on.