Anything I can do about missing employer 403b match by less than 1 hour?

March 24, 2009 8:34 PM

Shot down for 403b employer match b/c I have 999.08, not 1000 hours worked in calendar year 2008. Anything I can do about this?
posted by warsawjude to Work & Money (7 answers total)

Double check their math. Really? I mean, come on....55 mins.....really?
Seems suspicious.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 9:11 PM on March 24, 2009

Double check your time slips. Did you accidentally fail to report any time? Can you amend your report? Did your employer add up your time correctly?
posted by zippy at 10:08 PM on March 24, 2009

hal_c_on, that's Benford's Law, it's a plurality and not a majority of the data, and it has been mathematically proven.

This sucks but I would chalk it up to experience. They have a rule and are probably administratively required to follow it. In future know the rules and make sure you get those extra 55 minutes.

For the record, public employees that I have known are the most pathological about comp time, flex time, earned/unearned vacation, and whatnot. This is probably because the rules are invariably quite inflexible.
posted by dhartung at 12:52 AM on March 25, 2009

Whats that theory that most collected data begins with a "1"...and if it doesn't its likely fraud?

You can't really use Benford's law to say "this single datum doesn't begin with a 1; I call shenanigans." Otherwise how could any datum begin with anything other than 1? It mainly holds up for distributions spread across several orders of magnitude.
posted by letourneau at 6:58 AM on March 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

Did you actually work 1000+ hours? If not, I don't see anything suspicious here. If you worked that additional 55 minutes during the year, they'd have to pay over a bunch of money. So they made sure you didn't work that 55 minutes.

You've learned something valuable about this employer.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:37 AM on March 25, 2009

Response by poster: I thought I had more than 1000 hours but it was difficult to calculate. Our pay stubs don't have hours on them.

The payroll department miscalculated twice themselves. First they used my W-2, which only has hours paid in calendar year. I told them to re-do calculation. Then they divided pay in calendar year by pay rate. But my pay rate went up in February, so they needed to use different pay rate for January.

I will triple check and see if they miscalculated a third time.

Thing is, I definitely work more hours than I get paid for - emailing from home... - and it didn't bother me until now.

Thanks for thoughts.
posted by warsawjude at 9:04 AM on March 25, 2009

Response by poster: FYI - What I learned from ERISA - fed govt employee benefits division - is that employer cannot break their own rule about employee match. BUT they can say there was an error in timekeeping. Which there was if they choose to acknowledge unpaid work. Easiest for them to do if it's a specific day/time instead of e.g. did emailing outside of work, because that opens them up for many other complaints. I talked to the big gun today and she'll probably submit an amendment to time card because she knows I work more than I get paid.
posted by warsawjude at 8:39 PM on March 25, 2009