Part time employees do not accrue pto with my company. Full time employees with less than 3 years of active service accrue at a rate of 1.5 hours per pay period and full time employees with more than 3 years of active service accrue at 3.0 hours per pay period. I was hired as a part time employee and did not accrue pto - I was part time for 4 years and then became a full time salaried employee. My question is should I be accruing PTO at the 1.5 hour rate or the 3.0 hour rate. Since I have more than 4 years of active service with the company my initial thought is that I should be accruing it at the 3.0 hour rate but I'm not positive if my time as a part time employee counts toward my "active service".

You wouldn't get credit at my company. But it's whatever your company policies say about the issue. Maybe you should have asked when you were making the switch?

Were you accruing PTO as a part time employee? I should say we don't have any part time employees where I work. If you do get credit I would expect it to be half credit since you would probably earn half as much PTO as a full time employee.

This is not a matter of law but of company policy. Paid Time Off (I'm assuming that's what PTO is) is not legally required. So its up to your company's policies. You need to review your company handbook or talk to your HR department to confirm the rules.

They can treat it one of three ways:

1) Part-timers do not accrue active service for PTO consideration
2) Active Service is calculated based on original date of hire regardless of FT/PT status
3) A compromise where PT service is counted towards active service but not on a 1:1 basis. For example you 4 years of PT may count 50% so you have 2 Years.

In my opinion 1 is the most likely with 2 a possibility and 3 highly unlikely.

As noted, it is merely a matter of company policy. At places I have worked, part time employment does not count toward benefits.

So anywhere I worked, you would start at the lower rate because this was the first day of full time employment.