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The California Supreme Court recently ruled that acknowledgments may be evidence used by employers to refute meal period claims, but employers cannot obtain acknowledgments using “rounded” time punches when confronting employees with timecard deviations for meal periods. The Court’s February 25 decision in
Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC further held that time records showing noncompliant meal periods do raise a rebuttable presumption of meal period violations, which then shifts the burden to employers to rebut such presumptions with contrary evidence, which may include but is not limited to witness statements and objectively reliable employee acknowledgments.
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The California Supreme Court has ruled an employer cannot round the time an employee spends on their meal break to the nearest preset fraction of an hour. The court further held that time records showing noncompliant meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of meal period violations.
Meal Breaks: The Basics
A California employer generally must provide nonexempt employees with the opportunity to take an uninterrupted 30-minute unpaid meal period no later than the end of the fifth hour of work. Employees may not be discouraged from taking their meal period and must be relieved of all duty.
Where an employee’s meal period is involuntarily missed, delayed, or shortened, the employee must receive one hour of premium pay at the employee’s regular hourly rate. An employer need not police the meal period to keep an employee from choosing to work during their break. The employer need only ensure it provides its employee the opportunity to take a bona fide timely break from du
Highlights:
An otherwise facially neutral policy of rounding meal period start and end times are noncompliant with California meal period laws where the policy sometimes resulted in underpayment of meal period premiums.
Where records show noncompliant meal periods on their face, a rebuttable presumption of noncompliance arises.
Employers should consider implementing a system, such as a drop-down menu, whereby the employee’s choice to forego a provided meal period is documented.
On 25 February 2021, the California Supreme Court provided a long-awaited answer to the questions of whether California employers can legally round meal breaks and whether records showing potential noncompliance with meal period requirements create a presumption of noncompliance. Now, more so than ever, California employers should ensure that their timekeeping and meal break policies, practices, and increasingly important technology are up to date and compliant with the current demands of the law.
California Supreme Court Strikes Down Meal Break Rounding natlawreview.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from natlawreview.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On Thursday, February 25, 2021, the California Supreme Court in Kennedy Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC, effectively ended the usage of time-punch rounding policies in the context of.