My company (across multiple US states) uses paid 'flex vacation time' policy and the way it works is employees no longer accrue paid vacation/PTO time, you instead just simply request vacation in advance and it is approved or denied by management. This works great for the company as they don't have to pay PTO hours accrued if you separate from the company. It works ok for employees as long as the manager approves reasonable requests.
I caught word yesterday that one manager in another state office has verbally required employees to 'make up time' that is used for flex vacation. In other words, if you take Friday off, you are expected to work more on the preceding days to make it up.
To me this is textbook wage theft, but since the vacation time is not accrued, is it even arguably a real, quantifiable benefit in this argument? Or can the manager get away with this policy since the flex vacation is not explicitly an accrued/awarded benefit?