Policy: Legal-financial aspects of work contracts
Legal aspects
Practically every individual associated with Future Worlds Center has to comply with the organization's principle of independence. The organization might consider its associates as committing their full time and effort to their projects; however, from the legal point of view, they are independent contractees.
Since our associates considered as contractees and not employees, they shoule be registered as self-employed and arrange to pay their own personal social insurance and other related taxes, as the organization is not obliged to cover those costs for associates (who are not employees).
Each individual receiving income from the organization should possess the following work related documents:
- Gentlemen's' Agreement: considered as a welcoming letter referring to a minimum monthly payment without contractual bond
- Employee/Service Agreement: specific project-task related contract
Financial Aspects
Productive Hours
Definition of productive hours (time) of an associate can be vary due to the different personnel cost approach of the European Union programs.
Personnel cost based on Man-month
In case of projects defining staff involvement as certain man-month, every hour reported by the associate is considered as productive hours, therefore is subject to payment in compliance with the Employee/Service Agreement.
Personnel cost based on % of time
In case of projects defining staff involvement as a certain percentage (%) of a full time assignment (mainly projects funded by the Europeaid Program), Future Worlds Center considers the associate full time, if the following criteria are met:
- The associate devotes minimum 1,680 hours per annum to his/her task, i.e. average 140 hours per month and
- The fluctuation of the monthly productive hours during a calendar year does not exceed the 30% of the average monthly hours stated above in 2 consecutive months.
The above principles must be implemented in case of pro-rata calculation.
Rates
Due to the fact that our associates are self-employed and directly hired to implement specific project tasks, the rates budgeted in the Grant Agreement with the funding organization is used for calculation of the remuneration.
Monthly payment
In order to release the monthly project payment, every associate has to submit timesheet showing the actual hours spent on each and every project in which s/he is involved. The payment is calculated based on the information of the the submitted timesheet taken into account the rate and the definition of the productive hours set in the Employee/Service Agreement.
