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FLSA question
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FLSA question
Discuss employment-law issues such as family leave, overtime, disabilities law, harassment, immigration and termination.
Our PTO policy indicates PTO can be used for personal, medical/dental app'ts, sick, and vacation time and is marked in 1/2 hour increments.
Our new controller is insisting that time out of the off
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FLSA question
posted at 5/4/2000 3:17 AM EDT
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Posts: 67
First: 7/20/1999 Last: 6/30/2000 |
Our PTO policy indicates PTO can be used for personal, medical/dental app'ts, sick, and vacation time and is marked in 1/2 hour increments.
Our new controller is insisting that time out of the office (for EXEMPT emp) less than a day (8 hours) can not be marked, ie., should not be deducted from their PTO. (We do not reduce their pay when they are out of the office, only charge it against the PTO they are given.) She says FLSA doesn't allow this marking (again, notice we only deduct the time from a bank of time, NOT reduce their pay) in increments less than a full day. My research has led me to believe that as long as what is and isn't considered PTO is set forth in the policy, that we as an employer can establish what is deducted from PTO in terms of time however we wish. According to FLSA, what is the correct way to handle this? |
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FLSA question
posted at 5/4/2000 5:38 AM EDT
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Posts: 833
First: 6/11/1999 Last: 8/23/2001 |
Federally, you can do either.. the FLSA doesn't care how you debit PTO, as long as you're consistent, and the salaried amount doesn't change based on the quanitiy or quality of work. Your state may have a PTO quirk that I'm not familiar with, though. Please check.
From a defensive position, however, I can understand why your controller is hesitant to base any debits on half-hours or full-hours; in case of a complaint, you're now dealing with figures in terms of "hours" ... once the inspector hears the "H" word, the exemption is in question, regardless of how solid it is. Then, you'd have to jump through the DOL justifcation hoops. If you want a suggestion, we debit full- and half-days. No problem with the DOL at all. If you describe your deducting in terms of fractions of days, or percentages of a payweek, you're still okay. (You're still okay the way you described it, anyway, but again.. you want to keep away from using the "H" word). Again, your controller is probably suffering from Wage & Hour paranoia .. and that's not necessarily a bad thing... if he/she is trying to protect the company from liability, and not just disallowing partial days for expediency in PTO accounting. |
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FLSA question
posted at 5/12/2000 10:46 AM EDT
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Posts: 2217
First: 6/16/1999 Last: 12/13/2001 |
As a general matter (there are some exceptions I won't go into here), the FLSA prohibits deductions of exempt employee wages for any work week in which any work was performed. So long as you don't alter their pay, you are free to establish attendance/punctuality policies and enforce them, for example by counseling/disciplinary procedures and the like. You will want to review such policies with legal counsel to ensure compliance with all applicable law, not just the FLSA. |
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