Exempt EE/Negative PTO

Carla

I am hoping someone will be able to help me on this issue. We have a policy that employees who take time off must use their PTO hours. This is for exempt and non-exempt employees. For the exempt employees who do not have enough PTO will go in the negative. We have an exempt employee who is currently negative -51 hours of PTO, and is not FMLA eligible. Do we have to pay her for full days taken being an exempt employee? If she terms can we collect the $ from her borrowed PTO? etc. Any suggestion(s) would be deeply appreciated

Hatchetman

Does PTO cover for sick leave? Under FLSA, an employee's "personal time off" may only be deducted in full day increments. And, under FLSA, if you have a sick leave polcy and that is being implemented and your policy calls for it, you can deduct an exempt employee's full day's salary for any day that they are ill and unable to work if they have no more accrued time benefits to cover that absence. You may not, however, deduct partial day's salary unless it falls under FMLA. So, if the employee comes to work for part of the day and then falls ill and leaves work or has to leave work for part of the day for personal reaons (not due to illness), you may NOT dock pay for the hours he or she missed for that part day. However, DOL seems to allow deductions from accrued time banks for those hours, on the basis that FLSA only speaks to salary, not to fringe benefits or accrued time benefits.

It seems to me that you are violating FLSA if you go into negative time and have the employee do a "make good" for negative hours.

Carla

Yes, our PTO has sick time built into the accruals. I guess my biggest confusion for exempt employees is: Can we deduct for full days missed? I have heard you can, and I have heard you can only deduct for full weeks if the employee did not work anytime during the week. I am so frustrated, and really need to find the right answer.HELP

Marie

You don't have to pay if you have a bona fide sick leave policy in place. Hatchetman is correct. You would have to pay an exempt ee for the full week if you didn't have work available and they worked any part of the week. The sick time, personal time is treated differently.

Carol CA

I think you need to pay for the full day if they work any portion of that day. But, if they are gone for a full day you do not have to pay. You need to continue that practice until they accrue more time and work themselves out of the hole.

As far as collecting upon term, you can only do so if you have written authorization from the employee that they agree to let you deduct that amount from their paycheck. (Usually good luck on that one!)