termination

[dutch]

i live in massachusetts have been terminated by a company in new york. i am receiving l week salary for every year worked. On vacation they have told me i will receive l day because i have only worked l month in this year for them. it states in our manual under entitlements unused vacation pay will be paid whether your termination is voluntary or involuntary. a new policy was put in place, they tell me, last january of 2001 that you must accrue vacatin at l day per month in order to receive my 2 weeks. this means that i would not received my full 2 weeks until the end of this year. also i took 1 weeks vacation last january and was not informed i was not eligible to take off. There was no problem taking this vacation. my question is i received no notice of policy change, it states that they must pay for vacation at termination and if this new policy is in place why was I able to take part of my vacation last jan? i think they are trying to get out of paying. what's my recourse?

 

[cbg]

Many companies, including my own, will allow you to take vacation time that you have not technically earned yet. Then, if you leave the company and have a negative balance of vacation time, they deduct the balance from your final check. This is legal in MA - I know because I specifically called the MA DOL to ask if we could have that policy and they said I could, as long as in doing the deductions we did not take them below minimum wage. This would explain why you were able to take vacation in January even if you hadn't earned it all yet. In fact, I've never worked for a company that WOULDN"T allow employees to borrow at least a few days of vacation time, especially early in the year.

Can you be absolutely sure that you were never notified of the change in policy? On more than one occasion I've had employees in my office complaining that they were never notified of this or that, only to be embarrassed when I showed them the e-mail or memo that they never bothered to read.