Legal Question in Employment Law in California

Re: Deductions for sick when employee is salary exempt

Deducting partial days is not lawful and may change your status to hourly. The balance of the employer's policy appears to be OK. You are correct that if an employer does not have a sick leave policy no deductions may be made from an exempt employee's salary. However, if the employer does have a sick leave policy, deductions may be made before the employee qualifies for sick leave and after the employee exceeds the sick leave allowance. I would need to know more about the policy to determine whether the deduction for the holiday is appropriate

Re: Deductions for sick when employee is salary exempt

Both exemp and non-exempt persons can be "salaried" so your question is not salaried or not salaried but "exempt" vs non-exempt. If you are qualified under IRS rules and workers comp rules as an exempt the following applies. If work one day in week, must be paid for full week if exempt. If not paid, exempt status drops off and courts have determined the employer is then responsible for overtime, etc., etc., as though you were not an exempt employee. Deduction for partial sick day, again, same rules. I have question also re your statement that you are paid for 8 hours but work 10. If you are truly an properly designated "exempt" employee, you are hired to work whatever hours necessary. Eight hours not really matter to labor board if you are truly exempt.

Re: Deductions for sick when employee is salary exempt

You raise several interesting questions. The first is that the company is calling you "salaried." The right to overtime pay is not determined by a company's designation -- even though they say you are salaried, if more than 50% of your day is spent doing work that the State of California does not consider "exempt" work, you are entitled to overtime pay. A recent example was that insurance adjusters were found to be entitled to overtime pay. Another frequent example is restaurant managers -- who spend most of their day doing what their employees are doing -- waiting tables, seating guests, working the register, cooking, etc. -- are entitled to overtime pay, even though they are classified as "salaried," or "exempt." Their policy of docking pay may raise a suggestion that they should have paid overtime pay, because they were treating salaried employees as hourly ones. The sick leave policy, per se, seems okay -- since you did not qualify for sick leave yet, they could refuse to pay you for the time you were off. You may, however, have a good overtime claim.