Unfair termination... my friend's story...

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John recently joined this softwarehouse, about three months ago. During the interview, John was promised a salary package that is much better than his previous job. Based on that and the promise of a better learning environhimnt and more work to keep him busy, John made the decision to switch company to join this software house. Initially, John was offered the position of a QA(Quality Assurance), but two days before John was to report for work, John was told to take up the position of a System Developer. John explicitly made known to them that he does not have the necessary programming experiences on the platform that the position requires of him. The interviewer said that they are willing to send him for courses and will give him all the necessary training and facilities to get him proficient to deal with the job. Given the assurance that training will be provided and there will be plenty of work to keep him busy, John agreed to the role change, and signed a contract stating a 6-month probation, no leave during this period, and a 48 hours notice should either of them decide to terminate his services to the company. During his initial meeting with the project leader, John was told that he was specifically selected to deal with this particular portion of the system. His primary tasks were to implement some new enhancements, and to correct any problems that may arise during the testing phase. John was given two weeks as his familiarization period, two programming text books and a bunch of component names that are being used by the team to develope their application. John was to understand the capabilities of the language platform, and the the components. It was then John discovered that the company kept a poor record of their documentations. No design documentation, no requirement specifications, no technical documentation of the application and the components involved, just a user guide of the finished product. John did his best to study what he could. John was not allowed access to the application codes during this time. During these two weeks, having lunch with his new collegues, John found out that the company only pays the basic salary, and a 13-th month AVS, and that is it. No project incentives or any other renumeration that was promised during the interview, no going for courses, no external training. All skills that are required to get the job done, has to be studied through books and on-line help materials. John was disappointed. But John still decided to stay on the job, because it is a place that held new learning opportunities that his previous job could not provide. One and a half weeks into his two-week 'familiarization' period, John was given three days to deliver three main enhancements to the existing application. It was also only then, did John get a chance to look at the application codes. Looking at the massive amount of codes he have to understand, mostly developed over the past four years, John asked for an extention, explaining that he would need at least a day to understand the codes of the existing application, and at least two days to design, to code and to test each enhancehimnt feature. John was given a dressing down, and a 'I-don't-care-a-dateline-has-been-given' reply. Naturally, John couldn't meet the stated dateline. John only managed to finished the enhancements and delivered two days after the given dateline. But now, three-weeks into the job, John has become proficient enough to carry out any task relating to the applications under his care. During his lunches with his new collegues, John discovered more stories of a high-turn-over rate within the team, due the the Project Manager's unreasonable datelines, un-necessary demands and harsh words and scoldings. Many left because they could not tolerate his antics. John's position was left empty for months and the team was in urgent need of a system developer to resolve the existing problems in the applications currently under his care. Next, John was tasked with designing and creating new modules to handle another feature of the application. This time, John was told to investigate if the proposed features are feasible if windows components were used instead rather than using the in-house resources. John had his doubts and clarified them over the meeting, and was told to just do it. John was given four days this time. Within the day, John submitted his proposal and was given the go-ahead to built the prototype. After four days, John delivered the prototype, only to be told this was not what the Project manager wanted. John was instructed to redo the project using existing resource that are available in the system. John delivered within the day. To the manager, John did not meet the second original delivery dateline of four days for the prototype. Even when John explained that he has highlighted his doubts for the proposed implehimntation, and was instructed to built the prototype irregardless. His project manager gave him another dressing down, telling him, 'A dateline is a dateline, no arguehimnts'. Again, John was disappointed that his efforts were undermined. The following six weeks, John was heavily involved in solving problems that arised during the test phase, problems from modules and components developed by his predecessors. The list was long, but John was happy, cos there was work to be done. After all the problems were fixed, tried and tested, the application was packed and ready to be deployed to the customers. Having managed to clear all the problems related to the applications under his care, John was elated. The next day, after lunch, John was told that his services were no longer needed, reason being that John is under performing, cos the deployment dateline was suppose to be two-months ago. John tried to argue that two months ago, John only joined the company for three weeks, and that so many people was involved in the coding, and the testing, that added to the delay. How can John be the only one to be penalised? John was told, that was what a probation was for, to see if John could deliver. John argued that no programmer could join the team and delivered all his deliverables within the same month, even for someone with all the necessary experiences. John was told to leave imhimdiately. The company will compensate him his two days notice, and will give him his cheque at the end of the month. John was shocked. John called up the manpower ministry, only to be told that legally, John does not have a case to file, cos all the necessary compensation are being handled and properly given to him. No law was broken. Right now John is without a job, his work record tarnished because of some unreasonable Project leader and manager, and John has no way to get justification over his loss. He felt that he has been tricked into a job that the software house needed to fulfil specifically to meet some customer dateline, and gotten rid of when the job was done. Can this be considered an unjust termination? Is there anyway to undo this unjustified termination? Is there a law to protect employees from such unfair practices? What would you do if you were in his shoes?