Exempt Employee Suspension

bobo

I have an exempt employee I want to suspend without pay for five days due to a serious breach of company rules. Now I am fairly certain I need to suspend him Monday - Friday to avoid jeopardizing his exempt status. Am I correct? Also, can anybody point me in the direction of where to find more material on this. I want to show my CEO something in writing.

Rockie

You are absolutely correct that you have to suspend an exempt employee for an entire week unless it is for a serious violation of safety.

According to the law, if an exempt performs any work within a work week, they have to be paid for it.

As far as the statute, it is probably somewhere in the FLSA, but I don't know which section. Hopefully, someone else out there can help you with this. I would also like to know.

AnaFL

I read that the salary basis test specifically states that disciplinary deductions for exempt employees may only be made if such penalties are imposed "in good faith for infractions of safety rules of major significance" (29 C.F.R. 541.118 (a) (5) ) And of course this is for suspensions of less than a week.

However, the DOL stated that a full week of disciplinary suspension without pay is permissible because 541.118(a) of the regulations states that an employee need not be paid in any workweek during which no work is performed.