Another federal
district court in
has weighed in on whether employers need only make meal breaks available or
must ensure that employees take them. The new case involved a class action
lawsuit filed on behalf of FedEx Corp. drivers. The drivers claimed they couldn’t
take meal and rest breaks because they were under pressure to make deliveries as
quickly as possible, and therefore FedEx didn’t “provide” breaks as
What’s more, FedEx allegedly didn’t pay the drivers the additional hour of pay
for missed breaks, as California Labor Code Section 226.7 mandates. FedEx, on
the other hand, argued that it fulfilled its legal obligation simply to make
breaks available, and it was each employee’s decision to take breaks or not.
The U.S. District
Court in Los Angeles has now determined that employers don’t have to ensure
that employees take meal breaks.1 Agreeing with a San Francisco federal court that considered this
issue last year in White v. Starbucks (see CWHA September 2007), the court said that a California employer’s
obligation is to ensure that its employees are free from its control for 30
minutes, but an employer does not also have to ensure that the employees use
that time in a particular way. The court here declined to follow a 2005
decision, which in turn relied on a labor commissioner opinion letter holding that
employers have an obligation to make sure that workers are actually relieved of
all duty during breaks. It is important to note that
federal decisions on issues of state law. However, this decision indicates how
courts are analyzing the meal period issue.
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1 Brown v. Federal Express Corp., U.S.D.C. (C.D. Calif.) No. CV
07-5011 DSF, 2008