All of the businesses that I have worked at give their employees two fifteen minute breaks a day. Pretty much everyone calls them “smoking breaks” because it seems that they were made so the smokers don’t go bizerk after not having a cigarette all day. Of course many people use the break to go to the break room and get a cup of coffee and read the paper for 15. Whatever floats your boat.
Anyway, I was wondering if this is some kind of state law (in SC) or is this just something that all business just do out of courtesy?
New York State requires lunch breaks after a certain number of hours have been worked (in most cases), but specifically states that other breaks are not required.
In Britain if you work in front of a computer monitor you are required by law to have a five minute break every hour which can be taken as a 15 minute break every three hours. You can smoke on these breaks if you like. I don’t know about the States but I imagine you must have something similar as it was designed to prevent lawsuits for eye damage.
Thirty years ago, before smoking was generally banned in the work place, these were universally called “coffee breaks.” There was no need to take a smoking break, since you could smoke at your desk or station all day long if you wanted to.
In Saskatchewan, an employer is only required to give a person a 30 minute lunch break, unpaid. Any other breaks are at the sole discretion of the employer.
In California, there are two types of employees, “Exempt” and “Non-exempt.” These terms refer to the employer being exempt or not exempt from certain sets of regulations regarding pay and scheduling.
As far as non-exempt workers, those paid hourly wages and doing specific types of manufacturing and service jobs, a half hour unpaid lunch break must be given during every shift, as well as two 15-minute paid breaks. If there is no on-site food service (a catering truck apparently qualifies) then the law requires a full hour of unpaid lunch. This is how my employer explains the law to us, anyhow.
For the Exempt workers (salaried, e.g., Me) all bets are off. We are given the same breaks and lunch as the Non-exempt employees, and since we work on billable contracts, we report our hourly attendance and the charge numbers for the hours worked on specific tasks just like the Non-exempt. But aside from the hourly billing records, none of that is apparently a legal requirement.
As for smoking, well, this is California… where just this week state legislators proposed making it a crime to smoke in a car that also has child passengers… and Santa Monica wants to make it possible for rental property owners to forbid residents from smoking in their own apartments.
I think there are like three smokers in the entire building here… of a staff of 150. (At least, that’s how many of us have the nads to smoke on the premises.) And we can only smoke outdoors. And if my employer wanted to, it could ban smoking entirely. Rumor has it that the General Manager puts smokers at the top of the expendable list when it comes time for layoffs. I tend not to smoke at work, except occasionally one after lunch.
(When I started here 15 years ago, you could still smoke in offices that had separate ventilation, and in public areas like the cafeteria. Now it’s considered bad form to smoke anywhere on the premises, even the parking lot. And smoking indoors would probably invite more scorn than taking a dump in the office wastebasket.)
In Georgia, the law is 1-15 minute break per 4 hour work period, plus 1 hour for lunch if the work period is 8 hours or more. So a typical 8-hour shift is 2-15 minute breaks, plus lunch. Just FYI.