A "break" for the restaurant, hospitality, and other
industries that pay hourly-based wages has recently surfaced from
the Supreme Court of California. In a decision released in April
2012, the court in Brinker v. Superior Court held that,
while employers must "relieve the employee of all duty for [a]
designated meal [or rest] period," employers are not
obligated to affirmatively ensure that no work related tasks are
performed during such periods. A tremendous sum has been
expended by employers defending class action lawsuits such as this,
Brinker surely is favorable to employers who have had to
defend allegations of not providing adequate break periods or
coercing employees into "voluntarily" skipping breaks
altogether.
The origin of the Brinker case is found in a decision
by the California state legislature and the State's Industrial
Welfare Commission (IWC) to approve the availability of monetary
remedies (as opposed to only injunctive relief) for violations of
meal break statutes. Subsequently, Brinker Restaurant Corp.,
which owns or has owned popular restaurant chains such as
Chili's, Romano's Macaroni Grill, and On the Border Mexican
Grill & Cantina, was sued by a class of plaintiffs comprised
ofcurrent and former Brinker employees in California. The
complaint alleged that Brinker failed to provide the statutorily
required rest and meal breaks.
The court addressed two primary legal questions the amount of
break periods that must be authorized and the timing of the break
periods.
The California Supreme Court interprets the statutory wage
provisions to read that an employer must provide an employee with
no less than a thirty-minute meal period by the end of the fifth
hour of work. The meal break must also fall in the
"middle" of the work shift as much as practicable, the
break must not be interrupted, and it must be free from employer
duty and control. An employer may also not "impede or
discourage" the employee from taking the entire break
period. The statutory language does not however,
instruct that meal breaks must fall into sequential five-hour
intervals. This means that two thirty-minute meal breaks may
be joined together; one at the end of the fifth hour and one at the
beginning of the sixth hour of work. Finally, each employee is
entitled to an additional ten minutes of rest for every three and
one half and six hours of work, twenty minutes of rest for every
shift between six and ten hours, and thirty minutes of rest for
shifts between ten and fourteen hours.
While these are affirmative allowances that must be given by the
employer, the Brinker court found that there is a clear release of
obligation by the employer to "police meal breaks and ensure
no work thereafter is performed," as stated by the
Brinker court. In this employer/employee
exchange, it is the role of the employer to "relinquish [full]
control over [the employee's] activities" and afford
employees an "opportunity to take an uninterrupted
thirty-minute break." The reasoning behind this
instruction would be self-defeating however, if the employer is
also obligated to impose its influence during the employee
break, in an effort to ensure the employee does not work, through
monitoring and the imposition of restrictions on the employee's
activities.
So what does the Brinker decision mean? Employers
must afford their workers the opportunity to enjoy statutorily
protected break requirements and during that period, must be absent
from control or influence. Additionally, employers may not
attempt to circumvent these obligations by direct or indirect
pressure on employees to perform work activities during break
periods. On the other hand, without an affirmative duty on
employers to ensure that employees are not working during break
periods, employees cannot then choose to work during these periods
and subsequently attempt to pin liability on the employer for doing
so. Accordingly, the Brinker decision is sure to
limit future litigation, thereby saving significant legal expenses
for employers. Simultaneously, Brinker affords
employees an opportunity to a break during the workday or the right
to forego their breaks altogether. Scott Graham, commenting on
website www.law.com, states that the "ruling in
Brinker turns almost exclusively on California law, but is
expected to reverberate throughout the country" which is most
assuredly the case.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.
Specific Questions relating to this article should be addressed directly to the author.
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