Complaint Review: Meijer Store 129

I worked at Meijer store 129 in Indianapolis, Indiana starting on November 29, 2011 and ended my tenure August 28, 2012.  I registered one day of compensated work on a paycheck that was received on September 7th, 2012.  This date is when the second quarterly incentive payout was to be paid.  The second quarter included the months of April, May, and June.  The payout wasn't until September 7th which I was OK with.  My last check however did not include the incentive payout...because I was not "active" on the payout date.  This was the first reason I was given when questioning this very puzzling and NEW piece of info.  I then contact my store's secretary and it turns out a new policy was installed, effective January 29, 2012, that states incentives will be paid out if termination was for retirement, disability, or death.  it will not be paid out and forfeited for any other reason.  

This state of Indiana is an at-will state, in which the working relationship can be terminated at any time by the employer or employee for whatever reason.  Theoretically speaking they could get someone to quit or fire them at any time before the payout date and not have to pay.  This sounds more like corporate greed than anything I have ever heard of.  The incentive is work-based, which means that its computed based on store scores in key departments.  Those are "Total Store Meijer Customer Survey," "Total Store Sales," and "Total Store Mystery Shop."  It is even made plain and clear to every employee that there are certain key ways to earn 'Incentive" in each of the 3 areas.
I will save the trouble of mentioning those but lets just agree for now they all involve being on a TIME CLOCK and are considered WORK.  One is also not eligible for these payouts until they are in their "first full period" after 90 days employment.  It sounds to me as if this company is trying REALLY HARD not to have to pay as many of these as possible, yet every day at work they try and get you pumped up and work harder because these payments are on the horizon.

I am not naive, I know that the incentive is basically paid out for doing our job the way we would do it even if there was no incentive payout, but if you offer it for a quarter, or 3 periods, and the employee worked and contributed to the overall cause, that incentive should be untouched.  I wonder how many forfeited incentives this company has made happen and who has been affected by those decisions?  I wonder how many company policies they will change, without informing the employees involved, just to save a few bucks?  Anyone who reads this who has been affected by this "Incentive" robbery, lets get a fight together and take it to them.  I remember a certain LARGE box store chain that would not give its employees breaks but would clock them out for those breaks.  This is another work related crime that is happening to more people than I could possibly know.  If you are tired or companies sliding in policies that you never knew existed just to cover themselves, lets make it a point to say we were NOT informed and never signed off on those changes.  Thanks for listening.