Our company requires that Salary Exempt employees take a vacation day for calling in sick. They do not offer us sick days.

I thought I read somewhere that a company in Iowa can not require the above for one day increments and that was a perk for being a salary exempt employee.

Thanks for any advice.

I don't know what you read, but either it was wrong or you misinterpreted it.

Federal law says that an exempt employee cannot have their pay docked for missing time due to illness unless the employer offers a reasonable number of paid sick days which have either already been used or for which the employee has not yet become eligible. However, Federal law also does not care what "bucket" the pay comes from, and has declared that issues of vacation or other paid leave are a matter between the employer and the employee and is none of their concern.

I could find nothing on the Iowa state DOL website that addressed sick pay at all, and the Q&A for wage and hour questions specifically granted employers permission to have any vacation policy they liked.

So nothing in either Federal or Iowa law would prohibit an employer from requiring the use of vacation time for absences due to illness, even for exempt employees.

I agree that this is at best a non-competitive policy. But it is not an illegal one.