USA. New boss and department structure at work, they passed me over for promotion and unofficially demoted me by creating new positions above me, taking responsibilities away and pushing me down further than I was before the structure changes-I used to half run a very small department while being trained to eventually run it myself. 

The office unofficially  encourages the use of unpaid overtime. And one of the people they promoted above me brags to the boss (off the record) about how she does a lot of unpaid overtime.

They told me upper management was concerned I wouldn’t be physically capable of the work (desk job and I am, but I took a month off for my health earlier this year). He also said I could get promoted in 6 months if I work really hard to get there. They put me on a challenging project  that wasn’t properly setup during the prelim phase, with a ridiculous timeline, zero support, and also put me on tasks that pulled my attention away. When I tried to say that the project was going to fail I was told I just wasn’t capable. Which is ironic, cause no one else in the department would be expected to take on such a challenging task. 

He constantly asks if the new managers need any help with their tasks, but if I ask a question cause his methods are different than my old boss’s then he gets annoyed. If I ask for support he doubles down. They ask him for more work cause they have none. I notified him of 8 hours after working till 2am the day before and he said he would get me compensation but never followed through.

Thinking that this project was going to be used against me for promotion, but to also solidify my demotion, I put in 40hrs of unpaid overtime over the last month to get a decent product.

At the end of last week, I discovered that their current claim is I’m not promotable because my degree isn’t prestigious enough (bachelors instead of a masters). My former boss had no degree at all, and they’ve been “training” me for promotion for the past year. I’m going to be demoted if I stay there any longer. There’s nothing I can do.

I also realized that the pressure they were putting on me was to test how quickly I could complete projects prior to them officially saying I didn’t get the position. So if my performance drops, they can claim I’m slacking off. I don’t want a future of working unpaid till 1am for a pipe dream. So I emailed my boss and his boss with my total overtime hours for this project and said I didn’t need compensation, just that it not happen again. 

The company officially does not have approved overtime without prior permission. I was going to leverage this for some paid days off, as they’ve done that before. (That time was approved specifically on that condition). 

Then I heard I could be fired for this. Is this true?