Can an employer require you to take a 30-minute lunch break each day?

Factual Questions
41

If the company doesn’t enforce labor laws, like required breaks, they can get fined. While most state labor agencies don’t do a lot without a complaint, there’s nothing requiring that they hear from a disgruntled employee before levying a penalty.

I can’t see any reason your employer should open themselves up to fines just because some of their workers never learned how to relax for a few minutes a day.

To answer the question in the OP, not only is it legal to require a lunch break be taken, it is illegal not to do so.

Have you seriously never worked at an hourly rate for an employer that follows the labor laws? Are any of your coworkers with law degrees also mystified about why the boss doesn’t want to break the law?

42

Damn, I can’t imagine anything less than a 1 hour lunch break! I usually take 2. My employees get 2 one hour breaks.

43

Check my links in post #2, it does not appear that lunch breaks are required for adult workers in Virginia. Can anyone find a cite that disproves this?

44

Yeah, but you all leave work at 7 to 8 pm! On the upside, you get to sleep in and don’t have to show up until 9 or 10 or so… but on the downside again you have four rush hours instead of only two.

Consider yourself lucky that all of the foreign industrial businesses are slowly whittling away this obscene two hour dinner period. :wink:

45

We work from 8 until 6. Not everyone goes home for comida. But they have a lot of fun relaxing and taking their minds off work for a while. They aren’t all burnt out and uptight.

I go home very often because I am the boss and I want to spend mealtime with my wife and kids. You should be so lucky. As you know our main, heaviest meal is at midafternoon. Plus I spend a lot of my time running around town anyway so I usually run errands before or after.

Lucky? Bromeas? I happen to lament the passing of a lot of our traditions due to the impact of foreign businesses. I consider ourselves lucky that the gringo custom of “time is money” hasn’t caught on.

46

This is a cultural thing. When I lived in Africa my father, who worked for the UN, had a two hour break at noon, and we had our big meal then. School started very early but got out in time for us to go home for lunch and not come back.

I think there is was partly to allow people to be inside during the hottest part of the day, and let the many people who could afford servants have them cook lunch.

In the Bay Area a two hour lunch period would give me just enough time to get home, kiss my wife, and get back in my car to go back to work.

47

Out of curiosity, what are the practical consequences of misreporting your hours? Back when I was hourly, I had no particularly set schedule, so my starting time varied quite a bit and some days I took multiple breaks and some days I took none. But at the end of the week, I always filled out my timecard to say 8am - 5pm with a 1 hour break at noon. I was happy with this, and my employer was happy with this. Was it actually a major no-no which could have gotten one or both of us in trouble?

48

Pues, claro que bromeo! I totally understand what you mean regarding the loss of traditions. When my wife doesn’t bring me to Mexico for vacations, it’s business. American business. And we do things our way at an American business*, even in Mexico. Of course it’s obvious that foreign business congregates around other foreign business in industrialized areas with the specialized infrastructure to conduct that business, so the bulk of any Americanization of the culture really only happens there. Even most of the paisanos leave their American culture behind when they return home.

CBEscapee, I don’t remember which part of Mexico you’re from, and I know I’ve asked before.

*For example, we make everyone (salaried everyone, that is) speak English. The security office has instructions posted that anyone who wants a job has to leave a C.V. in English. Of my entire team on my last job in Mexico, I was the only Spanish speaker, even amongst Hispanics! To contrast that, any time I go into a Japanese plant in the USA or Canada, everyone speaks English, and there’s no requirement for Japanese, despite the legions of Japanese that you see running around the place.

49

Only if spite is the reason she doesn’t want to be fined for breaking labor laws. If the laws in Virginia are anything like the ones here in PA, she could get into big trouble if she doesn’t follow them.

50

Your employer can require you to take an hour if he or she wants to. Why is it that you don’t want to take a break? You had better be careful. Protesting the point WILL make your employer suspicious of you. He or she will assume that you have a scheme in place that you are trying to cover up. If I were your boss I would have already have started a docket on you that would be separate from your employee file. If it never goes in the file, you’ll never see it even if the entire file gets subpoenaed. I doubt you would last much longer if you were working for me.

Companies can also require you to take 1 or 2 weeks of vacation away from the business every year. Schemes always seem to fall apart during vacation unless there is collusion, but even then a good boss will see small changes due to there being another crook at the helm. Then the only choice is to decide which one you’d do without. Get rid of one and make dramatic so that the other one (and everyone else in the company) gets scared straight or gas them both and be done with it. Either way it sends a strong message.

51

I’m from Jalisco.

My daughter, who is fully bi-lingual with no notable accent, works for an American company here. She is frequently asked to handel tricky phone conversations for other departments with English speaking customers or suppliers. Of course the mangement employees speak English when needed but none speak it between themselves while discussing work topics or in normal conversation.

52

:dubious: Sounds like you’re expecting some sort of armed rebellion.

53

Oops… to be clear for everyone else’s sake, when the Americans aren’t around, the Mexican workers speak Spanish in their daily work lives. I simply meant that being able to speak English is a requirement, for our own (Americans’) benefit. Heh, just one of the many ambiguities of English is that “make everyone speak English” can mean “ensure that everyone can speak English.”

54

I can understand why he wanted this. I work closely with 5 other people in my office. 3 of them have a similar schedule to your employee and I have to work 8-4:30. Therefore, if I’m on a project with them and I need their input after 1 or 2 I’m SOL until the next day. I often find myself at 3 with nothing to do and having to look busy for an hour and a half.

Of course, my coworkers have kids and this lets them be home when their kids get home from school. And I have a different supervisor who works 9:30 ish to 6 and this is a compromise for her.

And I probably shouldn’t bitch because if I had my choice I’d work 6:30 to 2:30 as well.

55

As a professional, I don’t “punch a clock” but I’m expected to track my billable hours (similar to how a lawyer might). Depending on my workload, lunch might be a quick sandwhich at my desk if I can get to the cafeteria before it closes to a leisurely 1 1/2 hour “3 martini lunch” at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone.

56

Thing is, there is no law in Virginia that says we must take a mandatory lunch break. See garygnu’s comment below.

She’s only doing it so we’ll physically be in the office a half-hour later each day. And because she’s a spiteful micromanaging bitch.

57

I have no idea what you are talking about. What possible “scheme” could I be planning? How could this make me a “crook?” :confused:

Some days I just don’t feel like taking a half-hour break because I am really busy and have deadlines to meet and am “in the zone.” I don’t feel like doing nothing for 30 minutes.

You’re saying you would fire me because I’m a workaholic?! Strange.

58

In business, sometimes employees set up elaborate schemes to embezzle money from their employers. In order to keep the scheme going, said employee must always be at the wheel or it will fall apart. A lot of times another employee will fill in during the absence and notice an abnormality and report this to the employer. A lot of crooks get busted this way, especially at vacation time. Anyone who owns a business would understand this perfectly well. It’s human nature to steal if they don’t think they will ever get caught. “Planned absence” is simply to keep honest people honest. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Best,
Ross

59

[slight hijack]
Normally, I take a vacation day here and there throughout the year. In addition to normal holidays, I get 10+ other 3 and 4 day weekends a year. Works great for the manner in which I like to work, and (most important to me) I don’t have to spend days or weeks trying to ‘get back in the saddle’.

Works out great for the company, too! I don’t burn out, the customers get the service they have come to expect from me, and everybody stays happy.

Then, about 2 years back, a ‘security expert’ pointed out to my employer that I had never taken a “Vacation” …
::Never! OMG - he must be planning something sinister!::

Well, yeah.

The company used this very ‘justification’ to force me to take a 2 week vacation. I didn’t even have that much vacation time accrued, so they ‘bonused’ me the additional time - What A Deal!

The resulting ‘train wreck’ caused by the manager that was brought in to do my job without sufficient knowlege of my territory or customers lost us three multi-million dollar contracts, damaged relations with nine other multi-million dollar customers, and took me more than 18 months to clean up and put it back together.

Lost revenue for the company? $UnknownMillions.
Lost revenue for me? $22k+/-

My point: Employers’ suspicions that most people are dishonest and will steal at the first opportunity are entirely unjustifiable. IMNSHO.

Lucy

BTW, I just requested 3 consecutive business days off in conjuction with a weekend to go to a family reunion next month.

I was told, in very clear and easy to understand language, that I could only take that much extended(?) time off if all the bases were covered and I wouldn’t have to pull someone in to cover for me … :cool:

I wonder what would happen if I asked for all of my three weeks of vacation time in one block next year …

:smack: screwed up in reverse again …
[/slight hijack]

60

I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why a sane, rational person wouldn’t want a lunchbreak…