Editor's note: Katie Clarey is a regular freelancer with HR Dive. Her column, Back to Basics, began three years ago, when she started covering employment law. If you're new to HR (or just need a little refresher), follow along as she speaks with legal experts, peruses federal guidance and lays out the basics of federal employment law. Feel free to send tips, questions and feedback to [email protected].
Imagine an employee, Krishna, recently joined a furniture manufacturer as a human resources associate. On her first day, Krishna toured the facilities with her boss around noon. She observed that a cluster of floor workers munched on chips and sandwiches as they sat at their machines.
Krishna got back to her desk and took out her own lunch. As she ate, she wondered about the workers. She thought she remembered hearing that morning that floor workers were paid an hourly wage and that most took an hour-long, unpaid break in the company cafeteria for lunch.
Krishna hesitated to call out a potential problem on her first day. But she was sure she learned in a recent training that employers must pay employees for time they spent eating if they were working, too. She couldn't remember, however, which law mandated that rule. And was she sure it applied in this setting?
To answer Krishna's (hypothetical) questions, I reached out to Lindsey K. Self, an associate in the labor and employment practice group at Eastman & Smith. She ran through the basics of work breaks and how...
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