California courts have been making clear that employers cannot take advantage of workers, even in ways the companies may consider minor.

Workers needn’t blindly comply with whatever the company that signs their paychecks requires. The law lays out specific rights for workers — even scrimping on free time by a few minutes is grounds for legal action. To help illustrate your rights under the law, we’re offering an overview of some recent cases, including a couple in which the court decided the employer was attempting to be fair and to abide by applicable labor laws.

Knowing your rights is key. If you think your employer may be violating your break time or other rights, contact Keller Grover for a free consultation.

EVERY MINUTE COUNTS

That brings us to the first case we’re highlighting: Kaanaana v. Barrett Business Services. Barrett, a staffing and management services company, provided employees for two publicly owned and operated recycling facilities under contracts with Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. The specific employees, who no longer work for the plaintiff, stood at sorting stations along a conveyor belt, pulling off recyclables and placing them in the correct bins.

The law requires employers to provide at least 30 minutes for a lunch break. In this case, the plaintiff turned off the conveyor belt for exactly 30 minutes for a collective lunch break. However, the workers had to be back in place three to five minutes before the belt started again, effectively shaving time off their break. The workers, who had to clock out for the breaks, earned between $8.25 and $10.75 an hour.

The appeals court’s decision had multiple factors, but the most noteworthy points included that, per applicable labor laws, the company must give the workers an extra hour of pay for each workday during which they didn’t receive a full 30-minute meal period. Also, the court said workers should be compensated for the time they worked during the shortened lunch break.

Workers had sought payment for the full 30 minutes, arguing that they were on duty during this time, but the court did not agree on this point, saying that they didn’t need to be paid for time during which they were free from employer control.

A SLIM EXCEPTION

Another case highlighted a singular exception to the meal break rules. In the case of Jazmina Gerard v. Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center, an appeals court determined that the hospital wasn’t violating the Labor Code by letting certain workers on long shifts waive one of their meal breaks. The court denied that the hospital owed back wages and penalties for letting workers do so.

Generally speaking, the Labor Code requires a 30-minute meal period for employees who work more than five hours, and an additional 30-minute meal break for those who work more than 10 hours. However, the Industrial Welfare Commission allows health care workers to waive the second meal period even if they have worked more than 12 hours. Employees can choose to voluntarily waive a second meal period on long shifts, but the waiver must be in writing, and an employee may revoke it at any time with a day’s notice. Given that, the court determined that the IWC rule does not violate the Labor Code.

FAIR AND NEUTRAL

A key consideration is whether companies’ policies are fair and neutral on their face and in how they’re applied. In this particular case, they were.

In Donohue v. AMN Services, Kennedy Donohue worked as a nurse recruiter out of the San Diego office of AMN, a healthcare services and staffing company. In addition to a base hourly rate, Donohue earned commissions, bonuses and other forms of nondiscretionary performance-based pay.

All nonexempt employees used a computer-based timekeeping system to punch in and out, including for meal breaks. The system would round punch times to the nearest 10-minute increment, and recruiters could notify their managers to have changes made if they believed the system had handled something incorrectly.

Recruiters didn’t have specific break times, but breaks were permitted and expected as required by law. Also, the timekeeping system provided a drop-down menu if for some reason recruiters missed, cut short or delayed the 30-minute meal break. If recruiters selected from the drop-down menu that they had waived the full break, they were paid for hours worked. If they selected that they weren’t provided with a break, they automatically were paid the statutory meal period penalty (hours worked plus an additional hour’s pay).

California law allows an employer to use a rounding policy so long as it is fair and neutral on its face and won’t eventually result in employees being underpaid. The company’s expert witness demonstrated that the rounding policy over time did not cause work to go unpaid (rather, it caused a net surplus). In addition, the court determined that the drop-down menu regarding meal times fairly handled the breaks.

We are here to help those who are being mistreated by employers. If you want advice about how to handle a situation, contact Keller Grover for a free consultation. We can help you understand your options, applicable protections and steps you should take. In more than 25 years litigating fraud and employment cases, Keller Grover has recovered billions for its clients.