Employee Rights - Do We Have Any?

Recently, a friend of mine was told by her employer that they wanted to reduce her medical, sick leave and vacation benefits by changing plans. Since she is an office worker and the office is not part of a union she was told the company can do whatever they wanted with the benefits. However, in the past the office workers were always allowed the same benefit package as the union members who also worked for the company. When she began researching her rights, she found she had none when it came to employer offered benefits.

Many Americans are finding this out as medical costs and medical insurance rise and the companies they work for begin charging the employees more for their benefits or eliminating them altogether. The employee benefits that they once had are no longer as "beneficial" as they'd once been. And if these employees are not part of a union they are unable to lock in their benefits or have anyone fight for their right to keep them. What is a person to do when they have no rights?

Another strategy employers are using is to offer benefits that encourage employees not to use their vacation time, sick leave or visit a doctor. In the case of my friend the new benefit package gives employees incentives for not using more than two weeks at a time of their PTO (Paid Time Off) for vacation or an illness because if they take more than 13 days off at one time they will not be allowed to accrue new PTO during that time. Anything under 12 days and they will accrue it. In order to encourage employees not to go to the doctor the company offered to place money into an account that will be used for the employee to pay co-pays and medical visits and if they do not see the doctor in a year then the employee gets to keep the money instead. Imagine a company paying people to not see a doctor if they are sick? What happened to the concept of "preventative care"?

For people who have worked for a company for 20 years plus and have, in many cases, taken lower wages in order to receive better benefits, it is more than disheartening when an employer suddenly takes away all they have worked for. Of course, in cases where a business is doing poorly and cutting back on benefits is the only way to save the business and the jobs of the employees, this would make sense. But in most cases the employers who are cutting benefits still have a healthy bottom line.

By law, employers are not legally responsible to offer benefits of any type except under certain circumstances and in certain states. If employers do offer benefits there are laws protecting employees from discrimination in obtaining the benefits but if employers decide to decrease or suspend everyone's benefits there are no laws to protect the employees from this.

So, what are employees to do? In researching this issue I found there are few options for workers who are not already under the protection of a union. Employees can band together and try to join a union in order to negotiate back their lost benefits. However, this can backfire as you need to have a majority of the employees involved to be in favor of such a drastic move and the negotiation for a contract once you've gone union can take months. The only other alternative government labor offices offer is to talk to a lawyer and file a lawsuit against the company for lost benefits. But in this case, if you plan to continue to work for this company then filing a lawsuit would make the employer/employee relationship difficult. And unless you can prove that there was some form of discrimination or negligence on the employer's part then most lawyers wouldn't even take the case in the first place.

What we really need are more laws protecting employee rights. If your company has negotiated a salary and benefits with you then they shouldn't be able to decrease either no matter what the situation is. We have protection laws for the treatment of animals and the environment so why shouldn't there be ones to protect employees from losing the benefits they have worked so hard to earn?

In the past employers offered benefits as a way of obtaining loyal employees but that no longer seems to be the goal. The opinion that "anyone is replaceable" seems to have overtaken the job marketplace and employers have the advantage. Should we continue to let them take away our present and future security and jeopardize our health and the health of our families? So the question remains - employee rights, do we have any?