Types of Breaks and their Purpose
– Meal breaks, tea breaks, coffee breaks, lunch breaks, or smoko usually range from ten minutes to one hour.
– Purpose of breaks is to allow employees to have a regularly scheduled meal during the work day.
– Lunch breaks replenish employees’ energy.
– Breaks may be unpaid, and work hours may be longer to accommodate this time.
– Some employers request breaks to be taken at work stations or do not offer breaks at all.
Break Laws
– Modern break laws in the United States stem from labor laws passed between 1935 and 1974.
– The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was implemented to protect employees from abuses during the Great Depression.
– The act outlawed long hours without breaks and minuscule wages.
– As of 2017, twenty-six states in the United States do not have break laws in their legislature.
– California requires both meal and rest breaks for employees, while New York only requires meal breaks.
Restroom Breaks
– Restroom breaks generally last less than 10 minutes.
– Employees are expected to use facilities during regularly scheduled breaks and lunches.
– Denying restroom breaks could affect workplace sanitation and workers’ health.
– Taking too many restroom breaks could lead to disciplinary action.
– Restroom breaks are generally accepted and not tracked by employers.
Coffee Break
– A coffee break is a short mid-morning rest period granted to employees.
– It is also known as elevenses, smoko (in Australia), morning tea, or tea break.
– Afternoon coffee breaks or afternoon tea breaks often occur as well.
– The tea break originated from research on industrial fatigue in England in the early 1900s.
– The tea break was implemented to address monotony of work and its effect on productivity.
Legal Issues and Penalties
– Failure to provide mandatory meal and rest breaks can result in severe penalties.
– In California, employers must adequately staff their business premises to allow for breaks.
– Kenneth Cole Productions was required to pay an additional hour of pay for denying breaks to a store manager.
– Employers in California are not obliged to police meal breaks to ensure no work is performed.
– An employer will only be liable to pay for time worked during a meal break if they knew or should have known the employee was working. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_(work)
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A break at work (or work-break) is a period of time during a shift in which an employee is allowed to take time off from their job. It is a type of downtime. There are different types of breaks, and depending on the length and the employer's policies, the break may or may not be paid.
Meal breaks, tea breaks, coffee breaks, lunch breaks or smoko usually range from ten minutes to one hour. Their purpose is to allow the employee to have a meal that is regularly scheduled during the work day. For a typical daytime job, this is lunch, but this may vary for those with other work hours. Lunch breaks allow an employee's energy to replenish. It is not uncommon for this break to be unpaid, and for the entire work day from start to finish to be longer than the number of hours paid in order to accommodate this time.