[mikeash]

The only person in this thread who I see saying anything about not being upfront about it is you.

I'm curious as to how this would play out in court, though. They say you agreed to such-and-such in the contract. Asked to produce the original contract, they pull out a copy with your signature and the relevant clause crossed out and initialed by you. Is the court really going to say, "Well you didn't initial it, so even though you clearly saw this change and accepted the signed contract and said nothing about it over the X years that Bob worked for you, we'll say that it's still in force"?

I'd also like to know why "they still started their employment" would be considered to be implicitly agreeing to the employer's version of the contract, while "they still paid their employee" would not be considered to be implicitly agreeing to the employee's version of the contract.

I can see how you'd get in trouble with the tactic of just taking the contract and then ignoring it. But you get a contract, you counter, everybody shakes hands, you're on the payroll and somehow that implies that you agreed to theirs, and not vice versa? How could that possibly be?