California Lunch Break Law

Generally, employees must take an uninterrupted 30-minute meal break before the 5 th hour of their job starts. There are exceptions, including meal break waivers. Truck drivers who are driving trucks that require commercial licenses are also generally exempt from California meal break laws.

Common examples of credible, more likely to be won cases for missed lunch breaks include:

• Automatic clock out times for meal breaks regardless of whether the employee stopped working
• Time sheets filled out by someone other than the employee
• Employees who independently create time stamped records of their work in the employer’s computers, but have clocked out when they are doing that work
• Rules about abandoning the site if the employee works alone
• Employees in critical operations that cannot be stopped to take lunch breaks
• Employees who must answer their phones when on meal breaks
• Massive changes to the employee’s time records by management
• The need for work to be completed the first five hours of shifts

California Meal Break Law

The dilemmas in representing employees for meal breaks violations are many. The first issue is how many meal breaks did they miss? Sometimes, it is every meal break, or maybe the worker received just a few over a few years of employment. Employees serious about bringing a case for missed meal breaks, need to be able to estimate how many meal breaks they did not get, and their estimate needs to be the same throughout the case. If their estimates change every time they have to answer a question in the case that will not be viewed as reliable evidence.

Besides the need to be able to estimate, or pinpoint when a lunch break was missed, meal break waivers and attestations of taken meal breaks are common defenses. Meal break waivers allow an employee to waive a meal break. This can be done if they work less than six hours in a shift. It can also be done under other circumstances. If the employee worked more than 10 hours a second meal break would be due, and so even if one meal break was waived, the employee would not have waived the other meal break. Additionally, it needs to be clear between the employer and the employee which meal break was waived.

Missed meal breaks must be paid out as one hour of one’s hourly pay. Depending on whether bonuses or commissions are earned, the missed meal break pay may not be merely one hour of regular pay. The pay may have to require compensation commissions or bonuses. Alternatively, an employee can elect to be paid their regular wages and not a meal premium. If missing the meal break creates overtime or double time a client may want their attorney to opt for that pay opposed to the meal break premium.

Depending on an employee’s hourly pay, missed meal breaks can add up. If an employee earns $50 an hour and misses a meal break every day that is $250 if they work a 5 day work week. Over a period of 4 years this is approximately $48,000. However, if the employee is only owed a few thousand in missed meal breaks, the employee may want to consider a class action lawsuit.

What Is A Class Action Lawsuit?

Class actions lawsuits are lawsuits in which one or more employee represents every employee who experienced the same labor violations they are suing for. The employee bringing the class action lawsuit is referred to as a class representative. If the case settles and the court agrees to it the class representative may receive a slight fee for representing the class, in addition to the class representative’s share of the settlement proceeds for the entire class of employees subject to the labor violations. Class actions are the way to go if the employee is not owed enough money to attract a serious lawyer. Some class representatives also want to bring class actions because they feel their work will stop an unlawful labor practice, and benefit employees who are afraid to bring the lawsuit in their own names.

It is important that the employee’s attorney very seriously help the client decide whether class action representation is in the employee’s best interest. If the case requires considerable proof, expert analysis of a massive number of records, the challenge of an entire practice, but the employee’s damages are low class representation is the best alternative. If the employee is owed enough to attract a competent lawyer, class representation is not appropriate. If the employee is owed a lot of money due to a failure to pay prevailing wages for years, a concrete on call standby case for years, or significant amounts due to a lack of compensation class representation is not appropriate.

Class representation is also not appropriate if the employee’s predicament is unique to the employee. Class actions are due to practices that pervade an entire workplace. Individualized inquiries of each class member, about something other than their damage, defeats class treatment.

Examples of labor practices that deserve class action treatment:

• Time keeping formulas that are wrong
• An employer’s failure to include fixed rate bonus and commission pay in overtime, or missed meal break premiums
• Employees not being paid to drive to the second work location for the day, or not being paid to drive a company vehicle loaded with tools to the first location
• Paystubs that cannot be deciphered and/or do not specify rates of pay, or hours worked
• Mass misclassification of employees as independent contractors
• A failure to reimburse for cell phones used for work
• Not reimbursing for mileage driven for the employer
• A complete lack of time records for employees
• A policy against taking rest breaks
• A meal or rest break policy that contradicts California law
• Staffing ratios making it impossible to receive meal or rest breaks, or requiring overtime Worked there is no way to record
• A companywide policy of not paying overtime
• Illegal rounding of times worked
• Never paying employees reporting time pay
• Unpaid trainings

The decision to bring a class action is serious. If you want to read more about class actions, click here or call our offices at 877-525-0700. We will help you make the right decision.