Unpaid meal breaks can cause problems for employers. While the law is pretty clear (employees must be compensated for all work hours, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has some specific guidance on meal breaks:
- Federal law considers even short breaks (such as 20 minutes) to be compensable time. However, FLSA says that employers don’t have to pay most meal breaks (which last about 30 minutes or longer). However, employees must be completely off the clock and free from work-related duties during that time.
- If employees eat at their desks, they aren’t automatically entitled to compensation for that time. However, if they are working and/or mandated to do so or if an employee is required to respond to calls, emails, or other communications during lunch, that time would be compensable.
- As a rule, employers can automatically make appropriate deductions from workers’ paychecks for unpaid mealtimes. However, they must be careful to ensure that they don’t deduct for any meal breaks that the employee worked or was required to work.
- To avoid confusion, employers should have clear policies that require employees to communicate with management when they are working during lunch or other breaks so that auto-deductions can be reversed.
- If employees are consistently working during lunch breaks, it may to useful to find out why this is being done and if there is a reason why they can’t finish their tasks during regular work hours. In general, workers should be encouraged to take real breaks during the day where they can refresh and re-energize.
