I work in San Bernardino, California and I am listed as a Salary-Non Exempt employee which I was told meant that I would only be paid for 40 hours per week regardless of how many hours I work.
I currently work on the average 42-43 hours per week-and do not get paid any overtime.

I got sick last week and ended up leaving early one day after being at work for a little over 3 hours. At the end of the pay week -I was asked if I wanted to use a vacation day to cover my missed time. I wasn't aware that I had to...but was told that I did because I didn't work the entire day-When I got my paystub they deducted an entrie day- 8 hours and use a PTO/ vacation day.

There is something not right with this. I'm salary - non exempt, I don't get overtime and I'm forced to us 8 hours of vacation to cover a sick day when I actually worked 3 + hours- what happen to the time I actually worked?
If I had know I would never had bothered to get out of bed and come in !!!

As an exempt employee, they have to pay you for a day as long as you've worked a portion of this. They can deduct from your leave bank for partial day absences. I've never seen this rounded to more than the nearest hour, personally.

If you have an HR department, you might start trying to clarify the matter there as they should be familiar with exempt employees and may be able to gently guide your direct manager into what they can and cannot do with their staff.

Good luck to you.

I think SoCalPayroll misread the post. The OP said he was salaried nonexempt.

I agree, however, that this needs to be discussed with HR. Generally speaking, nonexempt employees must be paid overtime.

Also, it is legal to have a PTO policy that says PTO must be used in full-day increments, I believe. DAW?

OP, you aren't working under an Alternative Workweek, are you?

Do you work for a government by any chance? Union?

Also, it is legal to have a PTO policy that says PTO must be used in full-day increments, I believe. DAW?


Who knows? The sources for the CA rules, are the CA labor code, the CA-DLSE factsheet, the CA-DLSE manual and a few opinion letters. IMO, CA-DLSE has gone out of their way to avoid issuing clear understandable statements in this area for a long time now. For example, the current version of the CA-DLSE says something like per the "Conley vs. PG&E" decision, reducing the salary of an Exempt employee by 4 hours in response to 4 hours not worked it is legal. The problems with this statement are:
- If you read the Conley decision, the court does not say what CA-DLSE says the decision says. The court's sole interest was whether or not reducing the vacation/PTO balance risks the Exempt status, which is NOT the issue addressed by CA-DLSE.
- CA-DLSE does not say what their own opinion is. They do not discuss what the rules for when the Exempt Salaried employee takes something other then 4 hours. There are a lot of people who makes guesses on what they think the rules should be, but legally these are just guesses.

The OP is Non-Exempt, not Exempt. Arguably we are talking about a strict CLC reading. Pay the employee based on hours worked and also based on vacation/PTO reduced. The strict CLC reading supports this. More over there has been no historic counter argument to this handling. Arguably, for a Non-Exempt employee, if we do reduce the vacation/PTO balance by more then the time taken, we have a "forfeiture".

The Exempt Salaried rules can be legally confused because the 29 CFR 541.602 docking restrictions functionally make the salaried basis not very directly related to hours worked, and an argument can be made that as long as the salary is paid in full, that the labor code is not violated when vacation/PTO balance is reduced for partial days not worked. Of course, people have made opposite arguments using the same labor code wording in support. And CA-DLSE (other then a 1990s letter from the labor commissioner, withdrawn 3 weeks after issuances) has been very silent on this point.

Oops, yes. I misread the exempt status. :o

Thank you everyone for your help.

We do have an HR / operations manager but I seriously have my doubts as to their experence level.
I understand the non-exempt status but I'm not being paid the overtime worked. I'm going to bring it to their attention- keep your fingers crossed.