I'm a full time exempt salary employee.

I'm requried to punch in and punch out daily. I had to leave early for personal reasons and I was informed I would have to "Make up the time in order to be paid for it."

So my questions are:

Is it legal in Penssylvania to require a Full Time, Salaried, Exempt employee to clock in and out?

Is it legal to require them to make up hours in this way?

Thanks.

It is legal in all 50 states to require an exempt employee to punch in and out. It is legal in all 50 states to require exempt employees to work a required number of hours and make them up if they miss some. Being exempt means that you are exempt from overtime. It does not mean that you come and go as you please and it does not mean that you decide for yourself what hours to work. Exempt employees are still responsible for working the hours and the schedule that the employer sets down for them.

For some reason a great many people have gotten it into their heads that tracking the hours of an exempt employee destroys the exemption and that is not true at all. No law in any state prohibits it; I have been advised that a couple of states recently set down laws requiring it; and there are some very good reasons why it should be done. It only affects the exemption if the employee's pay is affected by the hours worked (and only then in some circumstances).

Now, if you had not made up the time (and the time was less than a full day) and you had not been paid for it, there might have been a legal issue. But neither requiring you to punch in and out nor requiring you to make up missed hours is illegal.

Now, if you had not made up the time (and the time was less than a full day) and you had not been paid for it, there might have been a legal issue. But neither requiring you to punch in and out nor requiring you to make up missed hours is illegal.

First, thank you for the quick reply. Second could you explain this?

If I leave 3 hours before the end of an 8 hour day, and i don't get paid for it there is an issue? But it there is no law that says I'm protected from having to make up that time as a Salary employee. So I feel like I'm missing something here.

If you are an EXEMPT employee (exempt and salaried are not synonymous) then your pay can only be docked in partial day increments under very limited circumstances. You can be required to use vacation, sick or personal time with or without your consent, but if you work any part of the day you have to be paid for the whole day. (Neither the Feds nor the state cares whether some or all of the pay was taken from a leave bank, as long as you receive it.) The only exceptions are if some or all of the time is attributable to FMLA, or if it is the first or last week of employment.

But that is a completely separate issue from required hours worked. Unless the employer CHOOSES to allow otherwise, both exempt and non-exempt employees are required to work the hours that the employer says they worked. Your exempt status for overtime does not change that. If he says you have to work, say, 45 hours a week, then you have to work 45 hours a week, and if you leave early on one day, the fact that the law says you have to be paid for the entire day does not excuse you from the employer's LEGAL requirement that you must work 45 hours a week.