Salaried Exempt Employee - FMLA questions
Zanne
289 Posts
This question spans two threads - but I'll put it into one.
We recently had a DOL speaker who has confused the pants off us.
Our two situations:
Salaried exempt employee who will qualify for FMLA, will exhaust her paid leave about 10 weeks into the FMLA. The remaining two weeks should be unpaid. Correct?
Salaried exempt employee who is currently using an intermittent FMLA to care for her daughter. She will exhaust paid time very soon. So, in the future, we can dock her the occasional FULL day here and there until the new year when she will have leave available. Correct?
The DOL speaker indicated that 1) we can't touch an exempt person's pay under FMLA regardless of any paid time out there (or lack thereof) and 2) that it must be more than one day's absence for us to dock pay.
HELP!
We recently had a DOL speaker who has confused the pants off us.
Our two situations:
Salaried exempt employee who will qualify for FMLA, will exhaust her paid leave about 10 weeks into the FMLA. The remaining two weeks should be unpaid. Correct?
Salaried exempt employee who is currently using an intermittent FMLA to care for her daughter. She will exhaust paid time very soon. So, in the future, we can dock her the occasional FULL day here and there until the new year when she will have leave available. Correct?
The DOL speaker indicated that 1) we can't touch an exempt person's pay under FMLA regardless of any paid time out there (or lack thereof) and 2) that it must be more than one day's absence for us to dock pay.
HELP!
Comments
Did the government not hire quality people to come out and talk?
Regarding the last question, you may dock the the full day's absence for the employee to care for her child even if she weren't on FMLA. And since, the reason for a full day's absence is not due to the employee's illness or injury, it would be considered a "personal reason" and you could dock it even if the company had no compensation reimbursement -- e.g., PTO or vacation, or even paid personal time -- at all.
Finally, I assume that the emplyee is not absent under FMLA on a partial day basis (since you haven't mentioned that). If she is, you may dock that partial day absence without loss of exempt status.
An employer can reduce the wages of an Exempt employee for any time taken as Family Leave (either continuous leave or intermittent/reduced hour leave). The employer would need to determine the applicable rate (hourly, daily, etc.) for purposes of appropriate deduction. This (as is specifically stated in the law) does NOT jeopardize the Exempt nature of the employee status.