Exempt status and inclement weather policy

System

We are a large manufacturing facility of approx. 650 employees at this site. Half are non-exempt, hourly employees. Remainder is exempt with a few salaried, non-exempt thrown in. We have an inclement weather policy that provides, basically, if the plant is open and an employee decides not to come to work, then for non-exempts they have the option to cover the day with available vacation, sick, or floating holiday, take it without pay, or make up the time lost within the same week. For exempts, they can make up the "missed work" by either taking a vacation or floating holiday, "make up the missed work" (alluding to working from home), or take it without pay.

My question is this: If an exempt has exhausted vacation and floating holidays, and cannot work from home, it is appropriate to dock their pay for not coming to work, correct? I understand that if they show up, even for 5 minutes, and then leave, they get paid for the entire day.

The employee could always "call in sick" and get paid (we do not use sick banks for our exempts), but the employee is honest and now would face a day off without pay.

Your thoughts?

Shadowfax

On another thread, Hatchetman just went through an exhaustive discussion of this area, and he is right on with the info. If you have no pto bank for exempts, then you have nothing to dock, because you can't dock salary. If the plant is open, work is avail. and exempt doesn't work and isn't sick, then its presumably a personal reason and fair game. But, if he works any part of the day, you pay. But for the pto policies, if an exempt works any part of a week, you pay; a week or more off, emp/er can dock. Now, go check the Hatcets discussion. (I didn't mean that to come out sounding like a direct order)!

System

Believe it or not, I had read Hatchetman's thread and had even printed out the various CFR sections that he referenced. I just wanted to confirm with the seasoned professions my understanding that under the regs, in our scenario, an exempt can be docked pay under the stated policy.

Following your "direct order" x:D I went back to Hatchetman's posts to re-read his comments. Have I missed something?

Shadowfax

Hey! I've spent 30 years with these regs, and I still learn something new everytime I look at them again, and, everytime someone posts a question.If you want to be really perplexed, borrow or steal (you can't buy one) a copy of the wage and hour divison field operations handbook to learn what the dol investigators are looking at and what they think is important - and not. I say you can't buy one, I tried for a year to get one from the govrnmt printing office and the dol and was stymied at every turn. One day, my sectry (a pretty good computer hack) came in with the whole setwhich appeared to be a photo copy, and told me not to ask where she got it - and I never did. My copy is several years old now (there are several volumes) but if congress quits playing with the regs, it should still be good for awhile. My secrtry has moved on noww, so if congress changes things, I don't know how I'll get another copy. On the other hand, by the time congress changes things and the dol gets around to writing and implementing new regs, I could be long gone anyhow!