2

The company L was offering me a lower salary than my previous job. I negotiated and was ready to turn it down if they can't make the salary enough to make a true lateral move. Finally, after 3 rounds of negotiation, they gave me a number just enough for me to make a true lateral move and I accepted the offer.

Before I accepted a job offer, I asked the HR how much 401K matching is and was told that it is six percent, period. After my first day, I found out that the matching is only "20% of the first 6%". That equals 1.2%. I blamed HR for providing misleading info and asked if they can keep their words or raise my salary to match the loss. My boss said he couldn't and accused me of "not happy with what the company offer" and terminate my employment after 1 week of hire with a 2-week notice.

FYI: Although my previous job has a lower salary, the bonus, the 6% 401K matching, and benefits are much better. Before accepting the offer, I calculated all salary and benefits to compensate for what I lost if I accept the offer, and came up with a number, which the company agreed to offer me by going over their budget.

I guess the company found me too expensive and rather keep the other person (they hired one guy and me in the same position) which could be cheaper. Now I have to file unemployment insurance (UI) which provides just 1/5 of my salary. My family cannot survive with the UI benefit.

Can I sue the company for providing misleading info and terminate the employment even when I didn't do anything wrong? If I knew the 401K matching earlier, I would either put it into the calculation to compensate for the loss of benefits or turn down the offer. The offer letter didn't say anything about at-will, just FYI.

I'm in Georgia, US.

Steven
  • 21
  • 1
  • 1
    Georgia is an at-will employment state. At-will is overridden only if the contract, offer letter, or other ascertainable record indicates that termination will occur for just cause. Georgia legislation might or might not have instituted a labor department agency with which to file a grievance in the sense of promissory estoppel, but I tend to think that's a long shot (in terms of labor law) and would be hard to prove. Sorry to hear that you ended up with a volatile and unreliable employer. – Iñaki Viggers Aug 21 '18 at 18:15
  • I am really curious about these facts but don’t have time to do a full-blown evaluation of GA law. I recommend you do a google search for job offer promissory estoppel Georgia maybe throw in detrimental reliance and start there. I don’t think you should include fraud in the inducement but you may want to just for distinction. If I have time to give it some attention I will look for some recent cases. – jqning Aug 21 '18 at 22:00

0 Answers0