I’ve been with this company for almost a year, for the most part enjoying what I do and who I work with. I agreed to join this company due to a combination of benefits, from the salary to unlimited PTO (required to take a minimum of 2 weeks a year), fully remote work, they don’t care where you are or what you’re doing as long as you’re getting your work done. It was a breath of fresh air and such a positive space to be in. Until today.
While we’ve had a couple members on our team who are regularly taking anywhere from 1-2 weeks A MONTH of pto, which I feel is a bit too much considering what we’re compensated and how non stressful the work truly is, one of those has turned in their two week notice because they were hit with their first denial of PTO. We get a meeting today with our higher ups to be told just our department is moving to hourly, we’re losing unlimited pto and only getting 17 days accrued with a cap of 25 days, 6 days sick leave, and since every one “has taken some amount of time off in the first half” we’re only getting 8 1/2 days for the second half of the year. Our benefits and the major selling point for me to sign on at this company are being cut down majorly “because we need to meet federal law and don’t want to be audited and get fined for making you guys salary.” The department everyone always claims works the hardest and has the most customer facing time and deals with the most nonsense, doesn’t have near the staff that it should for the amount of customers they serve (there are only 4 of us and we serve millions world wide), and they cut out our benefits. They start with this and I can only imagine what else they’ll want to cut out later on down the line too, really just pushing to see how much they can remove while retaining us as employees. One of my partners is indifferent and thinks it’ll be good, one is leaving and the other has been silent and I imagine is also unhappy about this change. If this had been the agreement from the beginning that would be fine, but it’s not. This totally cuts down the value of our benefits package and is essentially cutting costs from the department that is always shit on in every company. It’s frustrating to see a company that’s meant to be forward thinking and pushing for a better work environment is falling back and going against what they preach. Fuck.
Edit to add:
If they're doing this for the sake of meeting federal requirements to not get fined, what does unlimited pto have to do with any of it? From my understanding, there's no federal law stating that non-exempt employees can't have unlimited PTO, this is just them straight cutting down costs and not giving a shit. Looking over my hours, I've taken 1 week out due to working on relocation, and 2 days out for being sick. The rest of my time off is make up days for covering holidays and weekends (which we've stopped covering weekends). The next colleague closest to my level of work took 1 week off a couple months after we started, has had a few sick days for dental appointments, and recently had 2 weeks pto. The other two are where the trouble lies, taking 1-2 weeks off every month (literally, have tracked each day they call out, as well as time requested off, because of how frequently they're gone).
Just sitting here on it in my own head getting more frustrated at all the inconsistent reasons they give, the fact that I can be working two teams and still get hit with this move as well. Maybe I'm just overreacting but my god this doesn't sit well with me at all.