Hi,
Long time lurker, first time poster.
TLDR – the company is asking me to retroactively opt-out of their savings plan.
Is this legal? Is there a benefit to them if I do this, or penalty if I don’t?
I was in a very toxic, small, environmental consulting firm. I was in for about 2 years, after the first year, my states entire branch except for me and 1 other person quit. About 9 people.
Lots of illegal/borderline problems, I’ve been putting together an email for the Dept of Labor for a few months. No time and a half overtime pay. Being told to cap my hours to a salaried amount and it being an arbitrary number a project manager would come up with. Think “you have 3 hours to complete this 30 hour job. You can turn it in next week, you just have 3 hours to bill.” Being told to cap my hours when completing fieldwork, 12 hour maximum in the day. No travel pay, even from a company paid BnB to job site. Per diem was always a fight. I worked 16-18 hour days 7 days a week in a different city from my family, was promised a week off, then asked to work through it. When I said no, I was still getting phone calls through my entire time off about “if you can take care of this now on the computer you won’t have to when you’re back”.
I worked for about 4 months straight like that with occasional days off that I wound up working on anyways, and 1 week off that I worked on anyways. I did that for 2 summer seasons.
I quit after the end of the 2nd one and after I had a “conversation” with the CEO and his underling/my boss. I don’t want to get into that conversation now.
Anyways, this job honestly gave me some trauma. I was in the Army for years with an exemplary record, worked in Alaskan gold mines for weeks on end, worked on boats for extended times, but this was the worst job I’ve had with the most unrealistic expectation and most toxic culture.
To my surprise they emailed me about a benefit that they never told me about and are asking me to confirm my “deferral/opt-out selection”. It seems like they are asking me for a retroactive opt-out, but I don’t get why.
I marked it as spam and am trying not to think about it. It seems like a legal thing, and I’m tempted to get a lawyer involved, but also want to get the DOL involved for the other problems.
I know pretty much everyone has left now and they have no workers. I’m also
Concerned they are just trying to keep a tab on me or something.
Has anyone had this before?
Thanks for reading