The Human Resources profession recommends that every employer give his or her employees a half-hour unpaid meal break and two 10- to 15-minute paid breaks during the workday.

However, no federal law mandates that employers must offer meal breaks for general industry workers.

Among the states, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia have meal break laws that affect almost all employees.

The remaining states, including Texas, Alaska, Florida, Hawaii and Vermont, do not have a lunch break law.

This often comes as a surprise to employees in the U.S. There are 19 states that have passed laws requiring employers to offer meal breaks.

Theoretically, employers could work their employees for 8, 10, or even 16 hours in a workday without offering a meal break. Representatives of the Human Resources profession recommend against it, but there is no law to prevent it.

The recommended approach – a 30-minute unpaid meal break and two shorter paid breaks – is actually found to enhance employee productivity. In other words, workers who are granted these breaks produce more. The figures hold even if the paid rest breaks are factored in as work time.

It should be noted that while employers are not legally required to offer meal breaks, they may legally require their employees to take such unpaid breaks. The employer is within his or her legal rights to set a policy requiring employees to clock out for 30 or 60 minutes during a regular shift. Federal employers commonly use this approach to save on payroll costs. The policies usually state that employees who do not comply face disciplinary action or even firing.

There are some federal laws covering breaks. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), for example, requires meal breaks for workers in certain occupations. These requirements are for public safety rather than for worker protection. The law applies to airline pilots and interstate truck drivers. Among OSHA’s safety regulations is one that requires employers to grant workers bathroom breaks to answer nature’s call, but no law requires meal breaks.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 5:26 am and is filed under Labor & Employment Laws, Lunch Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.