Recently I visited the U.S. Department of Labor web site and read section number:541.118, dealing with salary employees. I noticed in section (2) "deductions may be made when an employee absents himself from for a day or more for personal reasons, other than sickness or accident. Thus, if an employee is absent for a day or longer to handle personal affairs, his salaried status will not be affected if deductions are made from his salaryfor such absences."

Based on the above it appears that salaried status is not affected by pay deduction for day or more of lost work. What about deductions for partial days for personal time for doctor's visits etc..., where one or two hours are missed?

Assuming that by salaried you mean exempt, the employee cannot have their PAY docked for partial day absences unless the time off is attributable to FMLA.

They CAN be required to use vacation, sick or personal time to cover the absence.

I was also looking at this section regarding salary employees.

Here is my situation that I would like some advice on. I have been a salaried employee with a manufacturer for the past 10 years. In 2001 our work became very slow. All salaried personnel went from 40 hour week to 32 hour week and they prorated our salary as such. Prior to this when overtime was necessary no additional pay was given.

We pulled out of that slump and in 2002 the employer made a "pool" of salaried employees that would receive a yearly bonus based on companies profits from the past year. This bonus is considered part of our new salary.

Now in 2007 we are slow once again and they are looking at cutting us back to 32 hour weeks and prorating our salary down once again. Can they legally do this? Is there something as an employee can do about this? I assume we are all exempt employees. How would we know for sure?

Also, none of us has seen a handbook for salaried employees. There is no set policy for absenses. Most of us try to keep absenses at a minimum but of course there are some who abuse it. So far our pay has not been reduced to absenses unless the work is slow.

Pay reductions are not unlawful. The only caveat is that the new pay rate must be announced prior to working at it.

I did want to point out that "salaried" is merely a pay method. The cite you list is specific to "exempt" workers. Exempt implies that the worker does not qualify for overtime pay when it's worked.

This determination is defined based on your job duties. This link summarizes some common "exemptions" as outlined in FLSA:

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17a_overview.htm.