This kind of labor law issue varies from state to state.
In California, there is an interesting twist. If an employee is on salary, in theory the employer can set restrictive sick leave policies regarding these kind of issues.
But, and this is a very BIG but, the employer MAY NOT track salaried workers work time by the hour. If the employee's time is tracked by the hour, and they can be docked for not working a 40 hour work week, then legally, they become hourly status, not salaried status. Granted, you as an employee would have to fight with the employer to enforce the law, but it can be done.

I once worked for a company, which had a written policy that all employees, salaried and hourly must report their hours. According to the written policy, employee's pay would be docked for working less than 40 hours per week.

In my case, this policy was never enforced. Right after I started work, I was in an auto accident, and lost a lot of time in the first 4 weeks. My employer agreed to continue paying my salary, and let me make up the time once I was recovered. Over the next 18 months, I accumulated several hundred hours of overtime, and managed a crash and burn project that would have been fatal to the company had it ultimately failed. 2 other techs had already failed in trying to handle this project.

About 6 months later, I was fired under very unfriendly circumstances. I cited the company policy regarding docking pay, and I cited the labor law and received a settlement of about $2,000.00 in settlement of my 'overtime'.
They sqawked for about 1 day (just long enough to consult an attorney) then wrote me a check.

There were 2 different ways the company could get into trouble on this issue:
1) If the written policy stated that salaried employees would have their pay docked, wether or not the policy was enforced,
and
2) If in the absence of a written policy, an unwritten policy was enforced of actually docking pay in this kind of situation.

That is California Law, I do not know what Washington law says on this issue.

Burt

>OK. I think the point here is that an employee is not required to use sick or
vacation time. He/she also has the option to take the time off as unpaid leave. I guess the word "required" threw me off since it implied that was the only option <g>.
>
>>What you are saying is not any different than I what stated Randy. I am basically stating that it is not illegal for the employer to charge sick time for an employee's medical appointment. Craig's message stated that it was illegal and that is not true. I went to the federal government on that one because my old boss for the federal government always charged sick leave for medical appointments and if you had used up your sick time then you could elect to take vacation time or time off without pay (all of which are allowed under federal law). I am not saying the employer is under any obligation to grant sick leave vacation days or even pto to an employee.
>>
>>
>>>>It is not illegal to require that sick time or vacation or even pto (personal time off) be used for doctors appointments.
>>>
>>>I'm not sure you're correct on this one (and it may be something determined at a state level). Certainly, an employer is under no obligation to pay an employee for sick time off. However, an employee is entitled to a certain amount of unpaid leave if that employer does provide for the sick leave.