In California, meal periods of no less than 30 minutes must be provided for an employee who works at least five hours, and two 30-minute meal periods are required for work shifts of more than 10 hours. Are employers responsible for making sure employees take their meal breaks? Or can employers just offer the meal break time for employees to use if they want? A federal district court in San Francisco recently weighed in on this issue—with good news for employers.
Manager Sues After Working 11 Days
A Walnut Creek Starbucks hired Steve White as a nonexempt store manager. After working for 11 days, White quit and sued, alleging that Starbucks violated the Labor Code and the applicable Wage Order by requiring him to work off the clock without overtime pay and not providing rest and meal breaks. Starbucks argued that there was no evidence it knew or should have known White worked off the clock, and that it wasn’t responsible for White missing his meal and rest periods because he voluntarily skipped them.
Court Sides with Employer
Agreeing with Starbucks, the court dismissed the case.1 Looking at White’s overtime claim, the court found that White failed to show that his employer knew or should have known that he was working off the clock. White admitted he never told anyone he worked extra hours, and he could not provide evidence that his superiors ever saw him working off the clock; encouraged him to do so; or criticized him for working extra hours.
On the issue of the rest breaks, the court said that while employees are entitled to rest breaks during the workday, employers are not required to make sure that employees actually take them—employers only must “authorize and permit” employees to take rest breaks. White conceded that:
- He chose to skip rest breaks.
- He didn’t take breaks because he didn’t need them.
- Nobody told him not to take breaks.
Offering Meal Breaks
The court also concluded that employers are not obligated to ensure that employees take meal breaks or otherwise enforce meal break requirements. According to the court, the obligation stated in the Labor Code to “provide” meal periods only means employers must offer meal periods. The court noted that making employers ensure that employees take meal breaks “would be impossible to implement” for the many employers that have hundreds or thousands of employees working multiple shifts.
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Therefore, for White to prevail, he had to demonstrate that Starbucks forced him to forfeit meal breaks, instead of just showing that he didn’t take them, regardless of the reason. But, the evidence showed that White chose to skip meal breaks, and Starbucks didn’t pressure him or other managers to work through breaks. The court noted that the result could be different in cases 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.
More 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.
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.
A Look Ahead
The California Supreme Court has yet to rule on the meal break enforcement issue raised in the Starbucks case, but in the meantime, employers should look to this case for guidance on complying with Labor Code requirements. Employers should also take all necessary steps to ensure employees are taking meal breaks and to keep records clearly indicating that meal periods were taken and at what times.
1 White v. Starbucks Corp., U.S. District Court (N.D. Cal.) No. C06-3861 VRW, 2007