I work in insurance sales and make commission via a book of business. I am moving to a new office and getting a new book of business. When I was first applying to the new office my boss was encouraging. That changed when he decided to schedule a vacation around the time I was supposed to start at the new office. Because our office is so small (and understaffed) he wants me to stay at his office until he gets back from vacation. I told him I would start at the new office as soon as I could and that if that happened to be after his vacation, great, and if not, well there’s nothing I can do about that.
We had been going back and forth for about a week, but today he came to my office and said that if I leave before he gets back from vacation he would take my book from me and I wouldn’t get paid for those commissions anymore. If I stayed, he would allow me to continue to allow me to get those commissions until my new book was ready, which is what was told to me when I first applied to this new office.
So my question is how exactly do I go about combating this? I’m not going to let him bully me because he sucks at planning his vacations, doesn’t want to hire new staff, or work a backlog. At the same time I also can’t go a month or two with no money. My initial impression is this cannot be legal, but I don’t know the technicalities and it could very well be, albeit scummy and manipulative.