Meal and Rest Breaks – Why You Should Take them Seriously

Meal and rest breaks are still a major issue for small business despite the relatively recent Brinker Decision. The liabilities associated with violations should scare you enough to make sure this is under control. In this post, we WANT to scare the heck out of you, but also give you some steps to make sure you comply.

Missed Break Penalties
Meal and rest breaks are a significant liability and should be taken very seriously. Employees are owed a penalty equal to one hour for missed or short meal or rest breaks, but that’s not all. That’s enough to affect any business but wait, there’s more, these penalties are just the beginning.

Waiting Time Penalties
Along with missed meal and rest breaks and the follow-up penalties (unless you take care of them within the pay period) come “waiting time” penalties. A waiting time penalty is a penalty for failure to pay employees on time, and start at one day of pay for every day the pay was late, up to 30 days. That means an employee at $12.50 would receive a penalty of $100 for every day that meal or rest break penalty is not paid up to 30 days. Potential fine for a short meal break……$3000. That’s for every violation, so if multiple breaks were missed, well you do the math.

Other penalties can also be assessed for inaccurate wage statements or pay stubs. This can occur when the pay stub does not accurately reflect hours worked because it did not account for missed meal breaks.

Beware of Plaintiff Attorny’s
Attorney’s, if they are involved, will throw everything at the way to see what sticks. These penalties will add up to thousands of dollars of liability for just a few missed breaks on the part of one minimum wage employee.

The Fix!
Do not fear! While the potential exposure is significant, there are a number of steps you can take to safeguard your business.

1. Ensure your meal and break policy is up to date
2. Utilize an electronic time and attendance system
3. Clearly post your meal and break policy (Fed State Posters)
4. Remind your employees often about your policy
5. Audit your time records every pay period before finalizing your pay period
6. Counsel or discipline employees who miss or short their meal breaks
7. Never ask or let an employee skip a meal or rest break, train your managers too!

Alternatively, if you are in an industry like where you might have field employees who might not be able to use a timeclock, make sure their time in/out is written on a timesheet and that there is a signature line agreeing that they have taken all their meal and rest each day.

We’ll be talking about arbitration agreements in the next few weeks so be on the lookout for that as a further step to prevent lawsuits.

As always, contact us at info@infiniumhr.com if you have any questions or need help with HR issues in your workplace.