Human Resource Blog

Salary Non-exempt

If I have an employee that is a salary non-exempt & they request to leave early, can we request that they take vac/sick time. If they do not have any available accrued time left, can we legally deduct their pay by the amount of hours not worked. I thought that if it was a salary non-exempt employee that we could not deduct from the normal 40 hr salary. It is over the required salary rate.
Thx

You seem to be confusing exempt and non-exempt status. There is no minimum weekly pay rate for a non-exempt salaried employee.

A salaried non-exempt employee is basically an hourly employee who is normally paid a fixed salary for the employers convenience in figuring payroll. The non-exempt employee is entitled to overtime when he or she works more than 40 hours per week. By the same token, when the non-exempt employee works fewer than 40 hours in the payroll week, her pay can be prorated. She can be paid just for the hours that she worked.

Unless this employee qualifies for FMLA, ADA or a similar law, there is no reason why you have to allow her to take the time off.  If you do allow her to take time off, you can and should require that she use any available sick leave, vacation pay, etc.

Different rules apply if the employee is taking unpaid time off under FMLA, ADA, or a state family leave law.