I am a production manager with 4 direct reports and roughly 70 indirect reports. I have always had a good relationship with my team and have tried to treat people fairly and with respect. I've always tried to go to bat for them when it came to corporate issues and policies and considered myself as a conduit between corporate and workers and vice-versa.
Two weeks ago I received a $2500 bonus for my performance last year. The day prior to receiving this I gave my 2 week notice of resignation effective 4/1/2022. Today was my next paycheck and I observed that they deducted my bonus from this check.
I decided that I was going to write an email to HR and my Boss. Here is that email.
Hello,
I noticed that the spot bonus given to me in the amount of $2500 in my pay period ending 3/12/2022 was deducted from may paycheck this week- pay period ending 3/26/2022. See below.
The legality of this action comes into question due to the following reasons:
1.)I was not notified that this bonus would be taken back from this week’s pay
2.) The letter given to me states that this was awarded to me due to my significant contribution to the business during 2021 as shown below and not as incentive for future performance.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/56c-bonuses
https://dlt.ri.gov/sites/g/files/xkgbur571/files/documents/pdf/ls/WageHourBook.pdf
My decision to resign from [Redacted] should have no bearing on the bonus awarded to me that explicitly stated that I was receiving it due to my performance in 2021 as outlined above [Letter Removed from this post]. This Interesting to me because as we all know that mixing topics is severely frowned upon in [Redacted] and seems to be quite an emotional and vindictive response.
We will together discover the legality of this action in the near future. Any additional attempt to alter my pay due on 1/15/2022, including payout of accrued PTO, mobile phone reimbursement and anything else legally owed to me will be answered with additional legal action on my part. I have worked onsite Tuesday, Wednesday and Today of this week (ending 4/1/2022 and took prescheduled PTO this past Monday which entitles me to full pay for each of these days as well as my unused accrued PTO time as shown below.
I have turned over my badge, office key, laptop and smock to [Redacted] as shown in the attachment and we have both signed, acknowledging this transaction.
I received a response a few minutes later from the director stating that this must have been a mistake and they will get it corrected by the appropriate team. I don't understand how this could have been a mistake, I think they backtracked due to my email. I was also accused of turning in my equipment to the wrong person and taking an emotional action by leaving the site based on my findings regarding the bonus being taken back.
I then attended our usual all employee meeting to say goodbye to my 1st shift team. During this talk I encouraged them to advocate for themselves and to work together to get what they deserve. I explained that no company will give you what you deserve unless you fight for it and that if they try and fail, to go out and find somewhere that will pay you what you are worth. I told them that I was in their position once and encouraged them not to become complacent and not to be afraid to actively search for a better life for themselves. I also stated that if they are happy, then that is great, this is not a difficult place to work and the company is not a completely horrible place to work but lets face it anything short of a 7% increase this year is a pay cut (average was standard 3%).
When I finished this impromptu speech my team all came to shake my hand and wished me good luck. I felt good about at least recognizing them and their contributions and really just tried to relate to them at a personal level. I left immediately after.
I received a phone call about an hour later from an employee informing me that the entire production team walked off the floor and was waiting for the site director to arrive. When she did, she addressed all of them stating they should not listen to the words of a disgruntled employee. One person spoke up and said not to throw me under the bus, everyone has been thinking about this for a long time and now that I had left they are taking the opportunity to speak up. She promised them to perform a market analysis and sent them back to work.
I am not sure what to do at this point.
I'll provide updates when they come.