Mealtime Law Clarified
Employees looking to collect on penalties for mealtime violations have a one-year deadline to collect, thanks to a Nov. 23 court ruling in the case of Caliber Bodyworks Inc. v. Superior Court.
The California law regulating meal periods has created some confusion for employers as to how and when they must provide meal and rest periods for employees—resulting in the imposition of penalties on employers. Since September 2004, the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency has been working to clarify the issue.
California Labor Code Section 512(a) requires employers to provide a meal period of at least 30 minutes for employees who work more than five hours per day. Section 226.7(b) further stipulates that if an employer fails to provide an employee a meal period or rest period, the employer shall pay the employee an additional hour of pay for every workday a meal or rest period was not provided.
According to a statement of reasons offered by the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement: “In situations where an employee is entitled to the one hour of additional pay, the employee has already been paid wages for the missed rest period since rest periods are always on paid time; the employee has also already been paid wages for meal periods through which the employee worked.”
At issue was the question of whether the hour of additional pay an employer must pay for each mealtime violation (on top of the wage paid for time worked during meal periods) is considered a wage or a penalty.
“An employer must pay employees for the hour worked during a skipped mealtime, but they must also pay a penalty for the mealtime violation,” explained Stan Levy, an attorney with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Los Angeles who represented Caliber Bodyworks in the case.
The ruling in the Caliber Bodyworks case established that the additional pay is a penalty.
“If the pay were deemed a wage, the statute of limitations [for employees to sue for payment] would be four years. But, because it was ruled to be a penalty, the statute of limitations is one year,” Levy explained. “Employees still have four years to collect unpaid wages for the hour worked during mealtime violations.”
On Dec. 22, a California jury awarded $172 million to 116,000 employees of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who claimed they were illegally denied meal periods. The Bentonville, Ark.–based retailer was ordered to pay $57 million in general damages and $115 million in punitive damages for violating the mealtime law. The class-action lawsuit, which covers current and former employees from 2001 through 2005, was filed in 2001. —Erin Barajas
