Short answer. No. Article 88 states that undertime work on any particular day shall not be offset by overtime work on any other day. The two hours are not worth the same, so netting them would quietly convert premium-rate hours into ordinary ones and strip out the premium.
What the law says
Undertime work on any particular day shall not be offset by overtime work on any other day.
Labor Code, Article 88 — Undertime Not Offset By Overtime. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Permission given to the employee to go on leave on some other day of the week shall not exempt the employer from paying the additional compensation required in this Chapter.
Labor Code, Article 88 — Undertime Not Offset By Overtime. Read the full provision →
Why an hour for an hour does not balance
The prohibition is flat: Undertime work on any particular day shall not be offset by overtime work on any other day. The reason lies in the arithmetic rather than in any general principle about fairness. An overtime hour is compensated at more than the ordinary rate, while an hour of undertime is an ordinary hour. Trading one against the other therefore looks even on a timesheet but is not even in money — the employee surrenders a premium-rate hour and receives back an ordinary one. The Code closes that trade rather than policing it.
The workaround the article also blocks
The second sentence anticipates the obvious manoeuvre: Permission given to the employee to go on leave on some other day of the week shall not exempt the employer from paying the additional compensation required in this Chapter. So the offset cannot be dressed as a day off, a compressed arrangement agreed after the fact, or time given back in lieu. If the overtime was worked, the additional compensation for it is due, and letting the employee leave early another day does not discharge it.
What the rule does not say
It does not make undertime free. An hour you did not work remains an hour you did not work: the employer may treat it as unpaid, and may deal with persistent lateness or early departure as a matter of discipline under its own rules. What is prohibited is the specific act of setting undertime off against overtime so as to avoid paying the premium. Employees sometimes read this article as protection against any deduction for hours missed, and that is more than the sentence carries.
Spotting it on a payslip
Offsetting rarely announces itself. It shows up as overtime hours recorded in the timekeeping system that do not appear as overtime pay, as an overtime figure lower than the hours logged would produce, or as a line adjusting hours before the premium is applied. Put the raw timekeeping record beside the payslip for the same period and compare totals hour by hour. Where the two disagree, keep both documents — the discrepancy between an employer's own records is the strongest material in a claim of this kind.