Hello!
The position is through a recruiting/contracting agency (3rd party recruiters find employees to work for their customers)
The contract agency is responsible for distributing my paycheck and handling my benefits (including PTO)
I reached out to the contracting agency multiple times over months to ask them how much PTO I have and if there is a way to check (my paystub has never updated to be reflective of accrual or even the amount of PTO I had used. It has a start, earned, taken, and leave balance that have all remained at 0 despite my taking leave and my supposed to have been accruing time) and was ignored every time. I know I was ignored and the emails were seen because they have 1) responded to the emails, but addressed other things, and 2) one of the emails provided my new address, and they updated my paystub, so I know they saw it.
My offer letter clearly states I have X amount of hours (and they clarified at the time of my onboarding that’s how much I would START with) and they told me I would accrue, which is also mentioned in the employment agreement (but the employment agreement doesn’t state guaranteed exact amounts of accrual and I had trouble being able to access it previously due to it being tied into a portal used for online orientation/onboarding…)
Someone from the contract agency reached out to tell me I overused PTO. First, claimed I only had half of X hours and don’t accrue. Then when I pushed, he changed it to can accrue up to X hours. Then changed again to I have X hrs. Overall, contradicted themselves at least 3 times. They told me to expect to hear from payroll, but I haven’t yet (I’m assuming it’s to pay them back any PTO they believe I overused)
My two big questions are: is it legal for my employer to not tell me how much PTO I have? And, considering all the circumstances, (them refusing to tell me how much I have, them approving the PTO over the course of months (this “””mistake””” wasn’t a onetime/one paycheck thing, it happened over the course of months/multiple pay periods), my paystub not indicating I have a negative leave balance, etc) how entitled are they to ask for the money back? I have no qualms paying them back anything that is legally owed, but it is disconcerting to me that they’ve contradicted themselves multiple times on how much PTO I have (and thus how much I’ve overused) and provide no means for me to actually see it + wouldn’t tell me.