First of all, the California Labor Code requires the employee and employer to mutually consent before a meal break can be waived. While we cover damages extensively at the bottom of this page, it is worth noting now that an employer who fails to provide meal or rest periods as required by an applicable Wage Order must pay the employee one additional hour of payat the employee’s regular rate of pay for each work day that the meal or rest period was not provided. If the employer relinquishes control and the employee decides to keep working with the employers knowledge, then the employer must still pay the employees hourly rate, but not an additional premium.īefore you continue reading, sign up for our free monthly employment law newsletter! We will email you useful employment information that will help you protect yourself from workplace abuse. It means the employee is free to spend that time how he or she wishes. That means no phone calls, no helping customers, no checking emails, no running errands for the boss on the way to pick up lunch. If the employer has the employee do any work during his or her lunch break, the employee must be paid for it.Ī companys’ obligation is to relieve its employee of all duty, with the employee thereafter allowed to use the meal period for whatever purpose he or she desires. The 30 minute lunch break itself does not count as part of the hours worked (meaning its unpaid) if the employee is allowed to leave the premises and is relieved of all duty during that period. An employer may not employ an employee for a work period of more than 10 hours per day without providing the employee with a second meal period of not less than 30 minutes, except that if the total hours worked is no more than 12 hours, the second meal period may be waived by mutual consent of the employer and the employee only if the first meal period was not waived.Īn employer may not discourage or impede meal periods. (a) An employer may not employ an employee for a work period of more than five hours per day without providing the employee with a meal period of not less than 30 minutes, except that if the total work period per day of the employee is no more than six hours, the meal period may be waived by mutual consent of both the employer and employee. At it’s basic level, the Labor Code says: The section of law providing a worker’s right to meal breaks can be found in CA’s Labor Code § 512. The law supplemented with the CA wage orders. The video is simply an introduction, this page flushes out the things employees and employers need to know to stay on the right side of the law. But it is critically important that you read the rest of this page after watching the video. Robertson made the below whiteboard video to detail CA’s meal break law without legal jargon. That is why this page goes to extensive lengths to explain this area of law. But it CA’s meal break laws are far more complicated than that. This article was written to discuss the different types of meal breaks employees’ in California are entitled to under the law, as well as the compensation a worker who’s been denied lunch breaks stands to gain when represented by a good attorney. Most employees who work more than 5 hours in a day know that they are entitled to a uninterrupted meal period of at least 30 minutes.
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