While we all might roll our eyes at California’s micromanagement of your employees, the price of ignoring state laws is high.
Taco Bell has been dealing with a class action lawsuit for nearly 10 years. Regardless of the outcome, the length of this legal battle means this has already been very expensive. The employees claim Taco Bell did not provide appropriate meal and rest breaks.
As you know, employees are entitled to a 10-minute paid rest break whenever working the great portion of a 4-hour period, plus a 30-minute unpaid meal break that must begin within the first 5 hours of work when working more than 6 hours.
The good news is the jury didn’t agree with the employees about insufficient meal and rest breaks. The bad news is the jury did find fault with the way Taco Bell paid employees for late or missed meal breaks.
According to California law, if your employee does not take at least a 30-minute meal break beginning within the first 5 hours of work, you owe that employee one hour of penalty pay that day. You’ll want that pay to be a separate line item payment on the wage statement (pay stub) as proof it was paid.
It turns out Taco Bell was only paying the employee for the 30 minutes of the missed meal break, not the full amount of penalty pay. To make it worse, Taco Bell’s Employee Handbook was not compliant in this area. Their Handbook included a matrix showing meal breaks are taken AFTER 5 hours of work instead of starting WITHIN 5 hours, as legally required.
Taco Bell employees were awarded $496,000 thanks to improperly paid missed meal periods and a badly written section in the Employee Handbook.
It can be hard to ensure meal breaks are taken on time every day. That’s why you review timecards each pay period and discipline employees for not following your policies. While you may not be a target for a class action lawsuit, California’s meal and rest breaks make every company an easy target and the first thing any attorney will say to your employee is “tell me about your breaks.”
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