Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law Senate Bill 3146, amending the Illinois “One Day Rest in Seven” Act (ODRISA), on May 13, 2022. Those amendments add additional meal period, day of rest, and notice requirements to, and significantly increase the potential civil penalties for violations of, the Act. The amendments to ODRISA become effective on January 1, 2023.
With limited exceptions, ODRISA currently requires that employers provide employees who work for 7.5 continuous hours or longer a meal period of at least 20 minutes, said meal break to begin no later than 5 hours after the start of the work period.
The amended law will require subsequent, minimum 20-minute, meal breaks for every additional 4.5 continuous hours worked beyond the first 7.5 continuous hours. Moreover, the amendments specifically prohibit employers from designating “reasonable time spent using the restroom facilities” as a meal period.
In addition to the meal period requirement, and as the name of the law suggests, ODRISA currently requires that employers provide employees with at least 24 consecutive hours of rest during “every calendar week,” in addition to the regular period of rest allowed at the close of each working day. As a result, an employer could require employees to work for up to 12 consecutive days and still comply with the requirement that a day of rest occurs within each calendar week. That will no longer be the case.
The amendments change “calendar week” to “consecutive seven-day...
A study suggests a form of Munchausen syndrome by proxy may be driving some owners to invent symptoms or deliberately harm their animals Cat and dog owners making false claims that their animals ar...