What Are the Meal and Rest Break Requirements for California Employees?

California employees benefit from some of the most stringent, employee-protective labor laws in the country. Nonexempt employees are entitled to regular breaks and employers who are caught violating these laws could be held accountable in lawsuits. A comprehensive understanding of meal and rest break requirements is important for any employee.

How Many Hours Does an Employee Have to Work to Get a 30-Minute Meal Break?

Any California employee who is classified as a nonexempt worker is entitled to a duty free, uninterrupted meal break of up to 30 minutes if they work more than five given hours in a work day.

What Rest Breaks are California Employees Entitled To?

In addition to meal breaks, California workers are entitled to regular rest breaks that must be offered by the employer. These are 10-minute rest breaks for each four hours that an employee works and they cannot be interrupted or involve work activities.

Am I Entitled to Compensation if My Employer Does Not Follow Meal and Rest Break Requirements?

The rest break and meal break requirements are mandatory, meaning that if a boss does not adhere to break law rules, the employee is entitled to one extra hour of regular pay for every day on which any violation happened as well as another additional hour of regular pay for each day on which a meal break violation happened.

Calculating regular hours worked for the company can help to clarify when a meal or a rest break could apply.

What Happens if Meal Breaks Are Shorter or Aren’t Taken?

California law requires that nonexempt employees work no more than five hours without a duty free mean period of 30 minutes, as mentioned above. However, certain exemptions do apply.

If an employee voluntarily gives up the right to take a break or works no more than six hours, then the break is not mandated. Employees are allowed to waive this meal break with the mutual consent of both the employer and the employee. Any employee who works greater than ten hours in a day is entitled to an additional meal break.

When an employer fails to give a proper meal break to a nonexempt employee, the extra pay requirements could apply.

How Are Meal Breaks Tracked?

California employers are responsible for ensuring that clock-in and clock-out times for meal breaks are recorded on a daily basis. A full review of those records could reveal that certain employees have had their required meal and rest breaks ignored.

Can Any Employee Waive Their Meal Breaks?

Some human resources experts believe that employees should only waive their meal breaks in limited circumstances, such as when the worker will only be on shift for six hours. Employees can only waive meal breaks if they have the consent of their employer, and only if they did not waive a previous meal break in the same shift.

Who Is Entitled to These Meal Breaks?

Meal periods and rest breaks only apply to nonexempt employees and one of the most important groups of those exempted workers are white collar exempt employees.

Exempt employees are those who must spent more than half of their work time doing managerial, creative or intellectual work, regularly exercise independent judgement and discretion in performing such duties and earn a monthly salary that is equivalent to at least double the California minimum wage for full time employment.

If you believe that your California employer unfairly denied you your rightful meal or rest breaks, or otherwise violated California labor law, you may be able to file a California wage and hour lawsuit and pursue compensation.

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