Stop Meal Break Violations

Everyone surely knows by now that CA meal break law is fairly stringent…all employees who work more than 6 hours in a day must take a 30 minute meal before the 5^th hour. Of course this is a general explanation of this law, but you can catch up on all the full details in our previous blog, The Low Down on Meal and Rest Breaks.

The purpose of this post is to go beyond the basics of the law and focus more on some practical solutions to ensure that meal break problems don’t turn into lawsuits and labor claims.

The primary danger of not tightening up your meal and rest break policies and practice, is that a savvy plaintiff attorney can use minor, technical errors in meal break practice, and expand those violations into broader lawsuits, or settlement demands.

Because it’s almost impossible to defend black and white time records that show violations, attorney’s can anchor their settlement demands on the meal break issue, and then add to that, any number of “violations” including working off the clock (usually unprovable), late payment penalties, hostile work environment, harassment, retaliation and any number of hard to prove violations they know you can’t defend yourself on.

They know full well it doesn’t make sense for you to spend tens of thousands defending yourself. They know you’ll choose to you’ll settle for a nice sum that gives them a nice paycheck, just for writing a few letters.

Practical solutions to common issues

Employees taking short meal breaks - Employees often show up back for lunch a minute or two early, basically setting up a potential short meal break penalty.

• Implement electronic timekeeping that restrict meal breaks to 30 minutes and automatically pay employees the one hour meal break penalty.
• Document the reason for shorting or missing a meal break (Use our form here)
• Do not allow an employees to continue to short or miss breaks, take applicable disciplinary action when necessary

Employees working while on meal or rest breaks – Employees clock out but then engage in work either voluntarily or at the request of a manager.

• Make sure your policy is clear, working off the clock is absolutely not allowed and that employees must be free from duties while off the clock.
• Instruct managers to respect employee’s breaks, whether meal or rest breaks, and to be sure to never ask employees to do anything while on breaks or off the clock.
• If and when employees are discovered to be working off the clock, stop the practice immediately and document the incidence, possibly through disciplinary action.

Employees working past the 5^th hour without a break – Employees must break by the 5^th hour but get caught up in what they’re doing and fail to take their break on time

• Communicate your policy clearly and consider scheduling or staggering meal breaks so all employees have the ability to take their meal break
• Pay the employees the one-hour Meal Break Violation, and have employees document the reason for shorting or missing a meal break
• Be sure to train managers to monitor meal break activity and instruct employees to take their breaks at least 30 minutes before the 5^th hour or working

These are just a few of the scenarios, there are plenty more. The key goal here is to deny plaintiff attorneys the opportunity to use a black and white violation to spawn an expensive settlement demand.

If you have any questions on this, would like to implement electronic timekeeping or improve y our current policy, please contact Ana Standfast at ana@infiniumgroup.com.