November 11, 2010
Employers are not required to pay employees for time spent during bona fide meal periods. Bona fide meal periods are ordinarily breaks that last at least 30 minutes, but they may be shorter under special conditions. They do not include coffee or snack breaks; these are rest periods that may have to be counted as paid work time.
During such an unpaid meal period, an employee must be completely relieved from duty for the purpose of eating a regular meal. It is not necessary that an employee be permitted to leave the premises if he or she is otherwise completely freed from duties during the meal period. An employee who is required to perform any duties, whether active or inactive, while eating is not considered to be completely relieved of duties.
For example, an office employee who is required to eat at his or her desk or a factory worker who is required to be at his or her machine is working while eating. Some courts, however, have not required that the employee be completely relieved from duty during bona fide meal periods. Instead, they examined whether the employee’s time is spent predominantly for the employer’s benefit.
If you have employees working through lunch, you need to pay them under the FLSA. On the other hand, you should also discipline employees who are taking longer breaks than the allotted time.
Time clocks are not required by law but are often used by employers. Where they are, employees who voluntarily clock in before their regular starting time or stay after their closing time do not have to be paid for such periods unless they are working. However, personal time spent in the workplace may have to be compensated if the employee does any job function, no matter how limited, during that time.
Generally employers who use a timeclock system, have all of they nonexempt employees clock in and out for lunch, not just some of them. This allows the employer to keep accurate records in case a question arises at a later time.