My employee quit without notice and is demanding to be paid for unused vacation time. Do I have to pay it out?

It depends on two things:

• What have you done in the past?
• What does your employee handbook state?

Both of these criteria get to the heart of what is essentially your workplace policy. If your standard practice has been to pay out unused vacation to departing employees then you must do so for others.

Unless, you have a documented policy and criteria that outlines under what circumstances, on what basis and how much of that time you will pay out – that will instead guide your actions.

State Law does not mandate a specific action, but Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI)  will defer to the two criteria above for fairness and consistency, if it’s asked to review a specific situation.