I have a question....
I am an expemt employee in CA and I am wondering if I have to use my sick and or vacation for partial day time away from work.

IE. If I work 8-1 and leave for the rest of the day should I have to use sick or vacation to cover the rest of my scheduled shift.

TIA

It is my understanding that in CA, if you miss four hours or more you can be required to use sick or vacation time.

Nor do I understand why so many people consider this unreasonable. That is what vacation and sick time is FOR.

I think the half day reporting is also fair to use your time.

What about missing 2 hours out of an 8 hour work day

Still legal to charge a PTO bank. They can not dock your pay but they can charge leave in partial day increments.

Actually, I believe CA still limits that to 4 hours or more for vacation or PTO time, though I think sick time can still be docked in any increment. Michael? Megan?

Both the Conley court decision and the most current (March 2006) version of the CA-DLSE Field Audit Manual mention the 4 hour number, sort of. I find the statement less then clear and other statements in the same manual possibly contradictory. I am not certain that there are clear rules any more on this issue, just opinions.

You can always contact CA-DLSE directly. I would be VERY interested in hearing about any clear statement on this issue they make.

http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/

The DLSE does not make the law -- thus nothing that they say has any meaning at all on the subject.

In the only case on the subject, the court seemed to say that any partial day deduction would be allowed, regardless of the number of hours. However, courts can not make arbitrary statements of the law. That is a court can not say "All partial day absenese can be deducted from PTO." The only thing the court can do is rule on the case in front of it. That is "In this case, the partial day absences were legally deducted from PTO." The problem is that the employer had a policy of only deducting for more than 4 hours. Thus, when the court said it was legal, the only thing it could possibly rule on was the policy in front of it for that particular case. However, if you follow the courts logic, it is highly likely that if the employer did have a policy of deducting for less than 4 hours, the court still would have found it legal.

The problem is that even with the court's ruling in the Conley case, this area remains extremely problematic. For instance, let us say that the employee has his PTO docked for taking 4 hours off, but in that 4 hours answers a phone call from the employer. Presumably, this would be an illegal docking as they would be docking PTO for actual time worked.

Let us say that the employee takes 2 hours off and is docked, but agrees to make up the time the day after? What if he made it up the day before? The day before that happened to wrap past midnight, so it was really the same day? Came in a whole day on Saturday? Agreed to be imediately available by phone for any emergency? Agreed to check emails via blackberry?

All of the above questions are problems in this area. Thus, as an employer, you have two choices: 1) Make the deductions and potentially litigate any of the above issues or 2) don't take partial day deductions.

In general, the cost savings from taking the partial day deductions are not that great, and most employees don't even bother to keep track of them. As such, it probably is just not worth the hastle. If your salary exempt employees really have a problem with excessive partial day absences, the better thing is to talk to them, write them up or fire them.

The DLSE does not make the law -- thus nothing that they say has any meaning at all on the subject.


I actually agree with most of Michael's statment, just not the last part of the above statement. I however find the "nothing that they say has any meaning at all on the subject" to be a very curious statement.

The following quote is from the CA-DLSE website.

"Division of Labor Standards Enforcement"

"DLSE adjudicates wage claims, investigates discrimination and public work complaints, and enforces Labor Code statutes and Industrial Welfare Commission orders."

Main DLSE website.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/

The vacation/PTO rules issued for CA.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_Vacation.htm

Opinion letters issued by CA-DLSE, some of which are on vacation.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/OpinionLetters-bySubject.htm

Wage claim filings, including vacation/PTO related.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileWageClaim.htm

When dealing with labor law in California, many people like to consult various letters or publications by the DLSE. However, none of this have the weight of law and frequently the courts have completely disregarded the DLSE's opinion. The courts have refered to letters from the DLSE as "underground regulations" and usually give them little weight.

In the case of partial day absences, you can see a long history of this. At first the DLSE said that any deduction from the work week at all was not allowed. That is, if you worked one minute, you needed to be paid for the entire week, regargless of the reason for your absense. Shortly after they published this letter, they retracted it based on responses from employers. Later they put out the idea that no partial day absences could be docked from PTO. However, when an employer asked for their specfiic opinion on the subject, they retracted their position on the partial day PTO and advocated the notion that California follows the federal guidelines. This switch was in the middle of the Conley case.

So, not only does the DLSE not have any authority to make any regulations on the subject, but their past history on this subject is so ridiculous that no court takes what they say seriously.

The DLSE can make up its own interpretations for its own internal decissions. However, given that any decission they make can be appealed to the courts and the decission is given no weight what so ever, I just don't see any relevance to their opinion. Any decision by the DLSE that amounts to a large amount of money will likely be appealed by the employer. So, their opinion might make you feel happy for the short period between when you win the DLSE decission and it is overturned by the courts, but other than that, it just doesn't mean much.