Legal Question in Employment Law in California

A better practice would be to issue a warning and then discipline further if necessary up to and including termination for failure to clock in. Deducting pay from an employee who worked the hours with or without clocking in would set up you for a wage claim, so I would recommend against it.

Arkady Itkin

I agree with Arkady. The answer is a hard "no." Wages are pretty sacred in CA. There is almost nothing you can dock pay or "back charge" an employee for. In fact, if you fail to pay an employee knowing they worked, even if they provide no record of what hours they worked, completely in violation of the rules, you must pay them a reasonable good faith estimate of the wages due for the time you believe they worked. Your only options are disciplinary and termination, not monetary, especially when you know they actually worked.