What does it mean to “provide”
a meal period? Do you have to ensure that employees actually take their meal
periods? Or must you simply offer the meal break time and leave it up to
employees to use it or not? Here, we’ll take a closer look at a recent court
ruling on this issue that offers some positive news for employers.
Short Shift for
Starbucks Manager
Steve White was hired by
Starbucks as a store manager, a nonexempt position. He worked in a Walnut Creek
Starbucks but quit after just 11 days. He then slapped Starbucks with a wage and
hour lawsuit. He claimed Starbucks violated the Labor Code and the applicable
Wage Order by requiring him to work off the clock without overtime pay and not
providing meal and rest breaks. He also asked that the case be certified as a
class action.
Starbucks asked the
court to dismiss the case. The company pointed out that there was no evidence
it knew or should have known White worked off the clock. And, the company
argued, it wasn’t liable for missed meal and rest periods because White chose
to voluntarily go without them.
Case Dismissed
The court sided with
Starbucks and threw out White’s case.1 White had to demonstrate that Starbucks knew or
should have known that he was working off the clock to prevail on the overtime
issue, the court said. However, White admitted he never told anyone he put in
extra hours, and there was no evidence that higher-level managers ever observed
him working off the clock; encouraged him to do so; or criticized him for
working overtime. What’s more, during the 11 days he worked as a store manager,
White did record and was paid for a full eight hours of overtime.
Turning to White’s rest
break claim, the court explained that while employees are entitled to rest breaks
during the work day, employers are not obligated to ensure that employees
actually take them.
Indeed, the law states
only that employers must “authorize and permit” employees to take rest breaks. Here,
White admitted it was his decision to forego rest breaks, he didn’t take them
simply because he didn’t feel the need to, and nobody told him to skip the breaks.
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Employer Must Only Offer
Meal Breaks
The court then similarly
found that the law doesn’t require employers to ensure that employees take meal
breaks or otherwise enforce meal break requirements. The obligation stated in
the Labor Code to “provide” meal periods only means employers must offer meal periods,
the court said. The court noted that making employers ensurers of meal breaks “would
be impossible to implement” for the many employers that have hundreds or
thousands of employees working
multiple shifts.
The court noted that making employers ensurers
of meal breaks ‘would be impossible to implement’ for the many employers that have
hundreds or thousands of employees working multiple shifts
Thus, White had to show
that he was forced to forego meal breaks, as opposed to merely demonstrating that
he didn’t take them regardless of the reason. Here, there was evidence that it
was White’s decision to skip meal breaks, and Starbucks didn’t pressure White
or other managers to work through breaks. The court did point out that the
result could be different in a situation in which the employer knew that
employees weren’t taking their breaks and had work policies or practices that made it difficult
to take breaks.
The court declined to
follow a labor commissioner opinion letter position that employers must ensure
that employees take meal breaks. The court noted that it was bound to decide
the case the way it believed the California Supreme Court would rule.
Longer Time to Sue
On another note, this
case demonstrates how the California Supreme Court’s recent Murphy v.
Kenneth Cole Prods. ruling has breathed new life into cases that might
otherwise have been filed too late. In Murphy, the high court held that
the additional one hour of pay employers must give for missed meal and rest
breaks is a wage and not a penalty.
2
Here, White filed his
lawsuit about two years after he quit. Starbucks argued the case had a one-year
filing limit. But the court said that wage claims—including for the additional
hour’s pay—have a three-year filing limit versus just one year for penalties,
so White’s meal and rest period suit was timely, even though ultimately without
merit.
Conclusion
The Starbucks case is a
classic example of what employers have been contending with in wage and hour
litigation—a seemingly minor case gets brought in the hope of cashing in for a
whole class. Although this ruling provides helpful legal precedent for
employers in the event of a meal period lawsuit, it still isn’t clear how the
California Supreme Court would rule on the issue. Thus, employers need to be
proactive about meal periods to avoid getting taken to the cleaners.
_
1 White v. Starbucks
Corp.,
District Court (N.D. Cal.) No. C06-3861 VRW, 2007