Acme might be a hard company to do a business with, but if it feels it can keep it's employees and vendors still happy through other means, sure why not? They might take all the miles and points of the roadwarriors; but with all the miles now belongs to Acme (pun intended) the miles are rightfully Acme's which they can do as they please with it; short of selling them of course. With all the miles and the air travel cost savings, they might keep employees satisfied by giving every employee a $75 BestBuy giftcard as a holiday bonus, an employee-of-the-month award ticket for two to Hawaii, or heck even employee-of-the-year award for a business class round-the-world award ticket for two. It ain't coming from Acme's checkbook, it's coming from Acme's collectivized frequent flyer account so it's all up to Acme to do whatever it wants to do with it.

Who knows? Maybe Acme isn't all that cold-hearted; maybe with the number of employees it has flying on any given day, it figures it still can earn a lot more frequent flyer miles in a single year than any single individual can in a whole lifetime, they might be willing to let employees keep the bonus miles to strike the middle road.

Or it could just be Acme being too big of a company that it's acting as a pompous a-hole to it's salespeople with a "take it or leave it attitude" and figures that there are plenty of unemployed Americans desperately seeking a job who'd be willing to take up Acme's new corporate policy.

Or it could just be Acme being too big of a company that it's acting pompous a-hole to it's salespeople with a "take it or leave it attitude" and figures that there are plenty of unemployed Americans desperately seeking a job who'd be willing to take up Acme's new corporate policy.

That's more likely. Companies like IBM are always in the news for figuring out the latest way to harass their employees. They might even want their US labor force to quit, so the work can be shifted to cheaper pastures overseas, while quietly sparing the negative public spectacle of mass layoffs. Those kinds of companies have long cut the holiday parties and summer barbecues. New hires receive fewer paid vacation days as well. Companies would no longer be able to say, "We'll take your FF miles but we're such a great company to work for because we offer all these other benefits."

It's more like, "You better sacrifice for us to keep your job, for now at least. Thanks for scrimping and saving for us. You'll still be fired in the next round of cuts."

"Oh, and thanks for the tax rebates, municipality. We'll stick around...for now, ha ha. We'll be out of town and laying off again before you know it, ready to bilk some other town before we leave again. All the local businesses will come to depend on our presence, so we'll be in a position to bargain much harder if you really really want us to stick around."

I think that could be considered, but so far I don't know of any US carrier that has a ultra-discounted corporate negotiated fare that earns zero miles; even the most cheapest ticket on all the US airlines earn 100% of the base flown miles. Some foreign carriers seem to have this though (i.e. AC's ultra low fares do not earn any miles).

For the record, I only used "Acme Corp." What'dya expect from a company who uses one of it's employees as a beta tester for their questionable line of products? :D

That's okay. Pfizer did it, too. "Thanks for the tax cuts to entice us to stay after we bought the Wyeth facility. We're going to keep the facility open as a research hub....Actually, ha ha ha. We're going to keep the facility open all right, but it's going to be a tiny shadow of its former self. It will be a research hub, but we conveniently forgot to bring it to the public's attention that most of the departments are under manufacturing. And we're planning on laying off the majority of the employees who work there. Goodbye, local restaurants, gas stations, etc. We're going to make this a ghost town. And thanks again for the generous tax incentives."

More reason why I state that yes, American MNCs of today may have a better hand at the negotiation table against the airlines to let the corporations collectively earn the mileage earnings from their employees that fly on the company dime. May not have worked in the past, but today, airlines are so dependent on the corporations (who does all the decision making in travel instead of the individual business traveler) they might capitulate if given the right offer.

Hero Miles is an organization, not an individual, yet they're allowed to stockpile airline miles. Those are donated, though, either from individuals or sometimes airlines. They probably have a lot, but probably redeem a lot at high award levels.

What a waste of time for someone to sit there and manage all these employees accounts. I don't know why someone would come up with a policy like this except out of boredom.

At our company we are expected to work and we do. The company makes money off our travel or keeps a customer. Our travel expenses are tax deductible.

On top of that, most of us work from home, heating/cooling/lighting us, providing furniture, coffee or a desk telephone are not expense for which the company has to provide us.

Now add to that some obscure policy where a benfit provided to someone flying an aircraft or sleeping in a bed away from home? Yeah, it wouldn't take me more then 3 minutes to ask the TA or hotel clerk to remove any point programs from my stay/flight. lol

Many airlines do not allow getting the points / miles unless you are person flying, regardless of who paid.

Corporations keep frequent flier miles/hotel points?
 

In this day and age, it’s all about cost cuts. First it was the water cooler, then the benefits, now it seems more companies are asking their employees to fork over their frequent flyer miles because it was paid with company money.

If you don’t like it, corporations are coming back with “tough luck, take it or leave it, and good luck finding a job in this economy," "we'll just find someone to do your job for cheaper; people will take any job these days without frequent flyer benefits.”

Granted there's no law that companies shouldn't go after their employees' miles when they are paid for with corporate funds, but what’s your take on this? Is this going too far, or just the way it is these days?

Don't use a company card for travel and/or don't give the company a frequent flyer number. For every action there is a reaction - thought that was The Law.:p

This is something that companies have done before, tracking the company paid miles and using them for future company travel. Soemthing to keep in mind next time you are negotiating the employment contract.

Except that many companies are requiring the use of a company issued CC for expense/cost management. As well as having a travel site that company travel must be booked through, so few ways to get around this.

My father told me that, when airlines started rolling out FF programs a few decades ago, this was sort of a big deal. Eventually it blew over and employees generally kept the miles, but I'm not sure why. You can see why the company would want to keep them; I certainly would if I were in that position. Maybe they haven't been able to do this because the FF account holder has to be the person traveling?

I'm curious how large companies do this. I was always under the impression that frequent flier accounts are personal accounts, and the miles belong to the person who's account it is. I can understand a company requiring the use of a company CC to book the travel, thus the traveler gets no points/miles from the cost of the booking.

Even if the travel is booked through a 3rd party booking agency, can't you just apply your personal FF number at check in? I guess if you are an at-will employee not under contract, the employer can fire you for any reason really. And if you refuse to use your miles for business travel, they could always find 'some' reason to fire you.