I work for an extremely small company that only gives full-time employees paid-time off (PTO). We do not earn any type of sick pay and when we're sick, we're forced to take PTO. They used to allow us to take unpaid time off, but they took that away a little over a year ago. Any requests with unpaid time off are automatically rejected. But when they removed unpaid time off, they did allow employees to go into the negative hours (up to -40) in case of an unexpected emergency.

Here's where I'm having trouble... 4 months ago, I took a vacation and used all my PTO. 3 weeks after my vacation, I was extremely ill, missed 4 days of work (even returned to work sick), and was forced to go into the negative approximately 28 hours. Now I'm still in a deficit and I cannot take any days off until I'm back in the positive. I was trying to talk to payroll and HR about paying off those negative hours (deducting from a paycheck) so I could accrue my vacation time in the positive because I will need a day off in the coming month. But the only response I get is "We don't do that. Sorry."

...Can they legally do this? I'm not sure what the exact laws are; I've spent time researching, but I can't find anything specific.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

That's because there isn't any law about vacations and sick time... just how they are paid.

They do not have to bend company policy because you want another day off.

Sorry.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is... A company can force you to use vacation time for a missed day(s) of work?

Yes. Like Jeff said, the company can because there are no rules saying that they cannot. I will include a pointer to the actual CA vacation rules that do exist.

CA vacation rules (http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_Vacation.htm)

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate it.

If I read correctly DAW, if an employee has a negative vacation balance and quits and/or gets terminated, the employer cannot legally deduct those hours from the final paycheck. Correct?

That is a "yes, but". Yes the employer cannot legally deduct the negative vacation/PTO balance from the final paycheck in CA, but the employer can legally take the employee to court and try to recover there. Yet one more reason many employers never let vacation/PTO go negative.

BTW, the whole point of PTO as opposed to a vacation/sick/personal time policy, is that it be used for ALL absences regardless of the reason. PTO is not a synonym for vacation; it is an all-purpose benefit.

Agreed. And it is increasingly common for employers to replace separate vacation/sick plans with a single PTO plan that is supposed to accomplish both tasks. While some employers still maintain separate plans, this is becoming less common over time.