Is employer allowed to demand exempt employees to take accrued time off? (employee, work)

[groc22]

I'm an exempt employee (computer worker) working at a plant in Illinois. One week ago there was relatively heavy snow, which resulted in power outage, and our plant was closed for the whole day. Everyone had been promptly notified not to come to work on that day.

Later, I received a direction from the manager to put accrued free time on that say - vacation, or sick, or personal time off.

From what I found,

https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/overtime/cr4.htm

"As a general rule, if the exempt employee performs any work during the workweek, he or she must be paid the full salary amount. An employer may not make deductions from an exempt employee's pay for absences caused by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business."


However, this is not salary deduction, but rather demanding to take accrued time off. Is employer allowed to do that?

[veuvegirl]

Not sure about Illinois, but in New Jersey, we had to take PTO if the office was closed due to weather.

[rummage]

Originally Posted by groc22

I'm an exempt employee (computer worker) working at a plant in Illinois. One week ago there was relatively heavy snow, which resulted in power outage, and our plant was closed for the whole day. Everyone had been promptly notified not to come to work on that day.

Later, I received a direction from the manager to put accrued free time on that say - vacation, or sick, or personal time off.

From what I found,

https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/overtime/cr4.htm

"As a general rule, if the exempt employee performs any work during the workweek, he or she must be paid the full salary amount. An employer may not make deductions from an exempt employee's pay for absences caused by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business."


However, this is not salary deduction, but rather demanding to take accrued time off. Is employer allowed to do that?

I would think so. You weren't working that day. Management can schedule your vacation days whenever they wish or not. That doesn't mean all of them will, but they can. If you were working at a restaurant and you were on salary and they closed for repairs, they would have you use up any sort of vacation coming to you.

What is key here, is if they do this. If they do, such as in your circumstances I would take that to mean the company is running with a very tight budget. Which means if there is a blip on their radar for anything, they wouldn't think twice about having a quick layoff.

So while you might not like what they did, I would take it as an indication about how stable continued employment with them is.

[oldtrader]

That is really universal all over the country.