My wife works for a small company in Jackson, and they have done something that seems at first blush to not be legal, and I'm looking for a bit of verification. Here's the deal... The office is a small start up that she began to work for back in 2005. At first she was the only employee and so there haven't been any real policies in place. Things have now grown, so they've been talking about getting policies. Well, in February, my son had strep so she stayed home with him for a week. Yesterday they call her in to tell her that they have their policies together now, and they are going back retoractively to February and docking her vaction time for the time she missed. Nothing had been published or even discussed until yesterday. I'm pretty sure I recall in regular law that you can't retroactively apply law (ex post facto??) but not sure about the labor arena. In other words, can they legally do this? Thanks for any opinions!

Vacation pay is not law, it's policy. There is no law in Mississippi (or any other state) that requires the employer provide any type of paid time off at all. Are you saying they didn't charge vacation when she missed a week of work? That's what paid time off is for; to keep the employee "whole" when not working.