Exempt Missing Time (again)

njjel

We have a PTO policy in place. An exempt ee has used all of her PTO. She has worked one hour each day during the past five days for a total of 40 hours for the two week pay period (we work a 35 hour week). Are we permitted to pay her for just the 40 hours or must we pay her for the full 70 hours because she worked one hour in each of the 5 days?

i thought I ready that if an employer has a PTO policy and the ee has used all of their PTO time that the employer does not have to pay them for the time missed.

joannie

This issue was covered in the March 2005 Oklahoma Employment Law Letter article, Deductions for absences: another way to risk losing workers' exempt status. You can find that article by logging into the Subscribers Area and doing a search.

davids

You can require the employee to use leave for absences if you have a leave program. However, my understanding is that if the employee has exhausted all of his/her leave, you cannot dock the pay. The employee would receive full pay for any week in which she performed some work.

This could, however, be treated as a disciplinary issue. How is the work being accomplished if she is not there?

Paul in Cannon Beach

My understanding is the same as Davids. You must pay for a full week if any work is done in that week. You can deal with the absenteeism as a discipline issue.

I think you can dock pay for single day absences if its FMLA leave.

Why is the ee missing so much work?

dbutton111

You can dock for full days only if no work was performed on that day and there was no pto or leave available. But since this employee worked every day you have to pay her full salary.

Where was her manager during this time? If I had an employee leaving after 1 hour you can bet she didn't do it the entire week. I'd help her take the rest of the week off without pay.

njjel

She worked from home 1 hour each day with her manager's approval! Grrrrrr......This has now been stopped.