Hi there,
I am a human resource manager at a semi-conductor company and I have run into a problem I am not familiar with. Today we came in to work to discover that our building had flooded in the clean rooms and the fabrication rooms. Since this was obviously not a safe environment for those workers I sent them home while our facilities management cleans.

What I am wondering is since we sent them home because of a hazardous situation do we need to pay them for the day? Obviously they will be paid for the time they came in before they were dismissed, but do we need to pay them for the remainder of their 8 hours or can we take from their PTO?

I haven't run into this before, so any answer or input is critical.

Thanks

I assume this is not a union shop. My advice would be to pay them - using their paid time off allotment may be legal but is really quite unfair as the employees were not given prior notice so as to decide how to spend their "vacation" day. And I think paying them would foster good will and loyalty that could be very beneficial in the future. Perhaps if your company was on the verge of bankruptcy I would be more ameniable to the idea of using PTO - in that case the employees would understand that their future rests with the ability of the company to avoid bankruptcy. But you don't mention anything like that here. And I wonder - are you requiring salaried employees (such as yourself) to use up one of their vacation days today?

What does the company attorney say?

In general, you don't have to pay them for hours they don't work. Review any employee contract, union contract, or employee handbook for anything that would be opposite.