That's so extremely common in 401ks at public companies that it's pretty close to being a standard industry practice. My company is the exact same way. It represents a tax savings for companies to do this.
Again, if someone got their partial matching funds in Enron stock, they were still free to put their 6% pretax salary contribution anywhere they wanted and they were free to invest their other earnings anywhere they wanted.
My employer's matching contribution, which is entirely in my employer's stock, constitutes less than 10% of my retirement plan.
If my employer, heaven forfend, were to go under, I would not lose my life savings?
Why?
Because I am not a moron like the Enron employees who not only worked for Enron and got free matching stock from Enron, but also put their salary contribution voluntarily in Enron stock and also invested other earnings in Enron stock and who basically never invested in anything other than Enron stock.
Your employer's matching contributions are basically gravy - a nice little extra which was never intended to be the core of anyone's retirement plan.
BTW, my free matching stock will be fully vested by the time I turn 45 - long vesting periods on free stock are a standard employee retention plan.
My point is that Enron did it this way, and it was a bum deal for the employees.
No it wasn't. They got free stock, but that free stock turned out to be worth nothing. They didn't pay for it, so any value they got for it would have been a windfall and getting nothing for it is exactly what they paid for it - an intelligent Enron employee lost not a cent of anything he had personally earned.
It wasn't "free" stock. An employer's contribution to a 401k is compensation for one's labor. So the Enron employees personally earned that stock.
In other words, they lost that part of their compensation, which they were never free to invest as they please. I call that a bum deal.
I don't know anyone who receives company stock for the employer contribution who has to hold that stock until age 50 regardless of whether they leave the company.