Justice Isn't Blind for Exempt EE's

HireFire01 · June 2003

A situation came up where a non-exempt ee committed an incident which he received a five day suspension. The exact same incident happened, however, this time it was to an exempt employee.

The managmenet staff does not want to issue a five day suspension, even though our discipline policy would mandate it. They are requesting that we create a separate policy for exempt ee's, and would like to reinsate the ee as soon as the drug test comes back. (By the way, this is currently a non-union shop).

Has any one ever heard of having a different set of rules for exempt ee's? Any insights would be appreciated!!

Crout · June 2003

Are we to infer that this was a D&A (Drug and Alcohol) policy violation? In general, discipline is never as cut and dried as you implied in your post. There should not be formulas that mandate a specific punishment for a specific offense because that does not take into account the idea of mitigating circumstances such as length of service, previous performance record and so on. HOWEVER, if you have a current D&A policy that leaves no room for judgement, then by all means follow your policy.

HireFire01 · June 2003

This was actually a major safety violation, nothing to do with the D&A policy. Thanks for your insights!

ray a · June 2003

A safety violation? A major one at that? Is safety any less important for the exempt ee? For the same violation, is the exempt ee less likely to be injured? Rhetorical questions. If anything, you could make and argument that the exempt ee should receive a stiffer discipline - they are presumably higher educated and should "know better". They should be setting the example for the non-exempts. When it comes to safety, the same rules should apply to all. I vote you use the exact same procedure for both catagories.

safety · June 2003

ditto with ray a

System · June 2003

Yup

scottorr · June 2003

I have to also agree with Ray. If you treat the exempt ee differently, you are asking for an employee relations nightmare. Besides you may leave yourself open to unionization.

LFernandes · June 2003

ditto - go with your policy.

Don D · June 2003

I won't second guess the company's discipline; but, I do think it is not legal under FLSA to suspend an exempt for periods of time less than one full week if his pay is being docked. He would be due his guaranteed salary for the week if you sent him home for several days.

LFernandes · June 2003

Below is the paragraph from the CFR and a link that talks about deductions from pay for an exempt level employee.

(5) Penalties imposed in good faith for infractions of safety rules
of major significance will not affect the employee's salaried status.
Safety rules of major significance include only those relating to the
prevention of serious danger to the plant, or other employees, such as
rules prohibiting smoking in explosive plants, oil refineries, and coal
mines.

[url]http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_541/29CFR541.118.htm[/url]
[29 CFR 541.118 - Salary basis]

LFernandes

LeeR · June 2003

I also would advise treating the exempt ee the same. Anything else would at the least smack of differential treatment which is going to be a moral issue. Even though we all realize that disciplinary matters are confidential they generally have a way of leaking out. The damage to employee moral alone would make differential treatment a bad idea.

RoadKing · June 2003

We are an Ohio Public Sector employer. Our policy calls for a reduction of the amount of vacation leave accrued by an exempt employee so that we don't have to deal with the reduction of earned salary. We also use working suspensions (a suspension of record only) so that the matter is on record and any future violations escalate through our progressive discipline policy.

Justice Isn't Blind for Exempt EE's

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