Short answer. No. Article 88 of the Labor Code says undertime work on any particular day shall not be offset by overtime work on any other day. Being late or leaving early on one day does not let your employer withhold pay for overtime you actually worked on a different day.
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 →
Each day stands on its own
Article 88 states plainly: undertime work on any particular day shall not be offset by overtime work on any other day. The article treats each day's hours separately rather than letting an employer net them against each other over a week or a pay period. If you worked extra hours on one day, that overtime is owed to you for that day, and it does not get cancelled out because you fell short of your regular hours on some other, unrelated day.
Even employer-approved time off does not change this
The article extends the same logic to situations where the employer actually agreed to the shortfall: 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 even if your employer let you leave early or take a day off, that permission does not excuse them from paying you the extra compensation owed for overtime worked on a different day. The same protection applies whether the leave was requested by the employee or offered by the employer.
Why the article draws this line
By refusing to let undertime and overtime cancel each other out, Article 88 keeps the overtime obligation tied to the actual hours worked beyond the normal schedule on a given day, rather than letting it be absorbed into a running balance the employer controls. Overtime pay is treated as compensation due for that specific extra work, not as a credit that can be offset against a separate shortfall on another occasion.
What this article does not decide
Article 88 addresses offsetting between undertime and overtime specifically — it does not itself say whether or how an employer may otherwise account for the undertime, such as through the normal deduction for hours not worked on the day you were late. What it forecloses is only the specific move of using overtime pay you separately earned to cover for that shortfall. It also has nothing to say about tardiness as a separate ground for discipline — an employer may still address chronic lateness through its own policies, just not by withholding pay that is otherwise due for overtime actually worked.