Our employer has a new policy regarding hourly employees. When arriving at work or returning from a paid 15 minute break, if you are even 1 minute late, they will deduct a half hour of your paid time. Is this legal? I was under the belief they could only deduct the actual time that your were late. What's to stop them from saying if you are a minute late, you are docked a full hour, or two hours? They docked a young man a full hour yesterday. He was 5 minutes late for work and then 2 minutes late returning from break. I know there are many penalties an employer can take to discipline for lateness, but is this one of them?

No, this isn't one of them. They cannot deduct more than 15 minutes, and only that if they use a legal rounding method for both sides of the line; i.e. employees who come in early as well as employees who are late.

But they can discipline the tardy employee by any other method they find appropriate, up to and including termination, even if the employee is only one SECOND late. Late is late.