Los Angeles Meal Breaks and Rest Periods

Los Angeles / Riverside County Employment Lawyers

By law, non-exempt employees must receive 30 minute, uninterrupted meal breaks and ten minute rest periods during a workday that is in excess of five hours. This applies to everyone who is not a professional, executive or administrator. California employers who break that law often find themselves involved in litigation.

If you are being deprived of meal breaks, we may be able to help you to understand your legal rights. California labor law 226.7 lays out the rules for meal breaks and rest periods:

All non-exempt California employees are entitled to a half hour uninterrupted meal break in each five hour block of time.

• All non-exempt California employees are also entitled to a 10-minute rest period in the middle of every four hour shift.
• Essentially, this means that anyone working 8 hours a day should get at least one half-hour break and two other 10-minute breaks.

California law says that an employee who has been denied breaks must be compensated with one hour of additional pay at their regular rate of compensation. If there was a pattern of denying rest periods and breaks, our attorneys can go back up to four years to collect that compensation. Many times, these cases result in employee class action lawsuits.

In one recent case, we represented a class of hundreds of hourly employees who worked for a high-profile, Riverside County-based company in the building industry. Employees were regularly denied meal breaks and rest periods in violation of the California Labor Code. In addition, time cards were altered by the employer to avoid paying overtime. The result of the one individual's efforts to challenge these practices was a certified class action and a settlement on behalf of 250 similarly situated employees.

At Emge & Associates, we have successfully handled many individual and class-action suits about many different employment law issues for clients throughout Southern California. Visit our Representative Cases page to read about more of our successes.

Contact our lawyers today and set up a free consultation to talk about a labor law violation resulting from being denied a rest break or break time. To speed up the process, you can fill out our employment law intake form.