I'm salary and they're deducting money

[Rebeccah1]

What is the name of your state?CA
I am paid a salary every 2 weeks. I was sick 6 hours over my allowed sick time of once a month. My employer deducted this amount from my check. Are they allowed to do this because I'm salary? And they deducted it out of the wrong pay period. I was told by my boss that she doesn't know and that they forgot to deduct it last pay period so they did it this pay period. Is this lawful? I thought if you were a salary employee for a non profit organization that it was unlawful. Please help me.

 

[cbg]

For profit or not-for-profit is irrelevant. So, to a certain degree, is salaried vs hourly.

With only very rare exceptions, none of which apply here, the same laws apply to not-for-profit as do to for-profit.

Salaried is only a pay method. What matters is whether you were exempt or non-exempt. Either exempt or non-exempt employees can be paid on a salaried basis; it's just that non-exempt employees have to be paid overtime as well, if they work over 40 hours in a week.

If you are a non-exempt employee, it is absolutely legal for the employer to dock you for going over your sick time. A non-exempt employee has no legal expectation of being paid for time they did not work. If the employer wants to offer sick time, that's fine; they don't have to.

If you are an exempt employee, it is still legal IN SOME CIRCUMSTANCES for the employer to dock your pay if you exceed your sick time. Unless your illness qualified for and was applied to FMLA, they can only dock it in full day increments; not partial day increments. If you worked any part of the day, they have to pay you for the full day. I could be mistaken, but I believe even in California SICK pay can be applied to the partial day absences; vacation time cannot in California and occasionally in Washington.

In all states, if the company has a bona fide sick time policy with a "reasonable" number of days, and you are subject to that policy, then if you have run out of sick time and/or are not yet eligible for it, your employer MAY LEGALLY dock your pay for absences due to illness.