Accrued PTO can become a major liability for companies as it is wages that must be paid out at some point in the future. That is probably the main/only reason that companies offer 'unlimited' PTO since it doesn't carry over at year end and zeroes out when an employee leaves the company.
I worked at a place that, until a few years ago, allowed unlimited PTO rollover. You were allowed x days a year on a sliding scale that increased with tenure, but you could roll over all of it if you chose. This was also the kind of shop where some folks had been working there for 20 years, and had worked their way up from the shop floor to upper management. There were people that retired there with 2000-3000 hours of PTO banked, which of course paid out at their current rate. The were doing everything they could to switch peeps to a capped rollover plan.
Another technique that is employed to reduce the $ value of accrued PTO hours of lifers is the 'donate PTO feel-good' plan where people can donate PTO hours to colleagues that are on medical leave and running out of PTO hours. Since the people with massive PTO accruals are usually upper management (who are 'always working' as they never have to clock in and out) and the recipients are not, the company gets to pay out the PTO hour at a much lower wage.
Yes, they introduced that too, after one of the larger natural disasters took a few regional stores and offices offline for a while. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was the real reason but you’re exactly right. Tooth-and-nail capitalist focus on reducing expenses while couched in the language of we’re-all-in-this-together virtue.
It wears on the soul to carry the necessary cynicism of modern life with us.
