For the longest time, as a temp or contract employee, I wanted to put in my 8 hours and go home. I wanted to eat lunch at my desk, not take a break, and leave 8 hours after I got there -- not 8.5 hours after I got there having taken a mandatory break at some point near or around lunchtime.
I just heard about the Brinker case. I know, I'm late hearing about it. The opinion I'm currently reading was filed on 7/22/08. I've only gotten a couple paragraphs in, and I haven't researched to make sure it hasn't already been overturned (I don't have access to the database systems that let a person do that easily, and it's doubtful that this has reached the Shepard guides in the law library at JFK University down the street from where I live)...
But basically, the gist is what I always told all my employers and coworkers -- the wage and hour laws requiring that employers provide meal breaks and rest breaks are there for the worker's benefit. This means that employers are required to provide them, but workers are not required to take them.
For some reason, all my employers disagreed with this and required that our timesheets reflect a half hour taken for lunch (and required that our timesheets also accurately reflect hour actual hours). As a result, I found that my timesheets accurately reflected my overall time in the office, but not the specific hours... and claimed a lunch break when I didn't take one. Either that, or if I had an employer who micromanaged, I'd spend a half hour snacking and surfing the web, then leave later and be miserable in the inevitably worse rush hour traffic. I figured that the employers just wanted to be able to prove that they gave us lunch breaks and didn't want anyone who chose to skip their breaks being able to come back and claim that the employer didn't allow them the break.
But now, the courts in California have agreed with MY interpretation.
I feel so vindicated. :)
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2 comments:
To be fair, my employer has a specific clause in the contracts that says you can't skip lunch to leave early.
This is mostly because we're services based.
- We have opening hours, and somebody has to answer all the the calls/emails received in those hours.
If people went home early, then the people who are left have to answer more calls each.
ah yes, but that's contractual rather that statutory.
Every employer I've had that tried to force me to take a lunch break never even mentioned it until after I'd been working for them for a while.
Also, I've not worked in the services industry -- the work I've done has been of the sort that it really could be done whenever. No need to have a physical body covering a phone or desk or whatever.
It's one thing to have specific times that a person is to be at his/her desk. It's another to simply require 8 hours of work during the day (with flexible start/stop times) and then say later: "oh, but you're required to take a lunch break because the law says we have to give you one"
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