I am part of a team working through a contractor at a very large corporation. We were told upon hiring that we would be paid a base plus incentive for performance to goal (we are in sales). We were asked by the contractor and the client company to be patient as they were completing the written document that would lay out the incentive program but they did share details - the schedule of payments, what goal we needed to hit, the dollar amount we would receive for hitting goal, what goal was based on, and that it would be paid retroactive to our start date if we earned any incentive prior to the official legal document being completed. All of us questioned the hiring company and the agency thoroughly to confirm and reconfirm that the program was not itself under review, and that it was firmly being offered to us. They routinely and emphatically confirmed that the program was not in question, just that the document had to be "rubber stamped" by the legal department and would be done very soon after we started working here (within two weeks). Our agency is totally ineffective in negotiating on our behalf, and also are complicit in the lying that's going on. We don't even know who the decision makers are and are dealing with all these goofy people who have no authority, but are the only people we have access to at our menial level.

Of course since we started, incentive has been taken off the table completely but we've all sold in the millions of dollars worth of business. We are being told that we "misunderstood" in a variety of ways, and intermittently people from both of the involved companies admit having mislead us, then go back to saying they didn't, to blaming each other and so on. They say they are "looking at other options" but never seem to present anything. It's gone on for months. We are looking for other jobs, but also want to make this situation right - we've lost a lot of money in this situation.

They keep meeting with us and calling us, collectively and individually to "acknowledge our concerns" and we keep saying, "present us an alternative and we'll try to work something out with you, but if you are saying that no accomodation will be made for this huge loss of income, that is not acceptable".

Do we have any rights in this situation? Are we correct in our belief that this must not be a legal practice?

Get the entire group of sales people and sue the hiring agency, the contracting company and the main company. As a group, you have the issue that you were all told the same thing, and/or you as a group can ask the agency to agree to be part of the law suit with you, if they will testify to what they were told.

Thank you - certainly that's an option but then again, we need the work so, I'm wondering also if anyone can advise how to manage the situation up to that point of a suit.

Thanks, FR Chuck.