On the dock of the pay

HROne

The January edition of the Employment Law Letter included a Q&A on docking an exempt employee's pay. It sparked some confusion in our department. Our question is whether or not to apply Paid Time Off (PTO) hours when an exempt employee has a partial absence. Let's say an exempt employee tells his manager he will be taking a 1/2 day on Monday for personal reasons. He has PTO available, so can we apply 4 hrs of PTO to his partial absence? Can you dock an employee's leave bank, or, in this case, PTO hours?

mushroomHR

We would dock the leave bank for a half day; not the employee's pay--you can't do that. If the exempt was absent for a half day and had no PTO left then we would pay for a full day.

HROne

Thanks mushroomHR. That's the way I understood it. As long as we do not dock the salary, we are OK. I appreciate your response.

HrOne

Parabeagle

Ditto. We would charge the leave bank - but would be careful not to dock if there was no leave available.

On another subject, thanks, HROne - Now I've got Otis Redding running through my mind...