Hello all,

A friend and former colleague's paycheck was docked 1 week of pay (approx $2,000) for arriving at work 5 hours late due to car problems. She is a salaried exempt employee in the state of Connecticut. She receives 4 weeks vacation each year, and has over 2 weeks of accrued, unused vacation time.

Anyone here familiar with CT and/or Federal lbor law and aware of whether this is legal? If no, what are her options?

One would need to refer to the companies policy and procedures manual to see what it contains regarding this situation.

I think a week is out of line, but if that is what is in the terms of the company policy, she probably has no way to challenge it.

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Originally Posted by kristin32

Hello all,

A friend and former colleague's paycheck was docked 1 week of pay (approx $2,000) for arriving at work 5 hours late due to car problems. She is a salaried exempt employee in the state of Connecticut. She receives 4 weeks vacation each year, and has over 2 weeks of accrued, unused vacation time.

Anyone here familiar with CT and/or Federal lbor law and aware of whether this is legal? If no, what are her options?

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The company has less than 10 employees and there is no policy that addresses this specific issue. The policy outlines the amount of vacation, sick and personal time each empoyee is granted and states that if the employee goes over the allotted time, it will be deducted from their paycheck. She still has accrued time available, and based on those details, I can't see how she can be docked. And yes, a week is ridiculously excessive.

This is illegal. One can be docked for time not working, but MUST be paid for time worked. It is totally and completely illegal to punish any employee by withholding earned pay.

I would go to the CT Dept of Labor and get the specific statutes that deal with this. I would then send a letter to the head of the company pointing out the illegal nature of having pay withheld. The letter should request immediate payment of earned salary.

If the company doesn't pay then go back to the Dept of Labor for the next steps.

In EITHER case, I would start looking for another job. Because the company is not going to want to keep her after this. It may take a bit to trump up an excuse to fire her, but they will.

Hello kristin:

In addition to the grounds Scott mentioned, I'd also bring up the fact that she's a salaried employee, as opposed to an hourly worker. The idea behind being paid a salary instead of hourly, is that the JOB the employee is working on is more important than the wage.

It would be fully within managements prerogative, for example, to demand salaried employees to put in 80 hours per week to get the JOB done at no increase in pay. The reverse is also true too, in that the very same employee would NOT be docked should car problems make him late.

This employer wants the salaried relationship to benefit HIM, and NOT the employee. That isn't the way it works.

I agree further with Scott in that, any employer who doesn't understand that relationship, and wants to exploit it to his benefit & beyond by demanding FREE work, isn't worth giving your precious resources to.

excon

Has your friend pointed out the error in her paycheck to the proper HR person? Like Scott and the other posters have stated this is wrong to have withheld an entire week's pay for a salaried person.