Dive Brief:
- Two Chipotle employees claiming they were denied meal breaks failed to support their claims, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (Mejia, et al. v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., No. 18-55085 (9th Cir. Dec. 9, 2019)).
- Demetrio Mejia and Christian Rodriguez worked as food preparers for the fast casual chain; they alleged in a lawsuit that, among other things, their supervisor knew they were clocking out for meal breaks without stopping work and that they felt pressured to work through those breaks to complete their work before crossing the threshold for overtime pay. Moreover, Chipotle required them to create false time entries reflecting that they took meal and rest breaks, they alleged.
- A lower court granted summary judgment for the employer, and the 9th Circuit agreed, concluding that the employees provided "no evidence that Chipotle [denied them] their thirty-minute meal breaks, or prevented them from taking their breaks." Chipotle did not respond to HR Dive's request for comment by press time.
Dive Insight:
The allegations in Mejia serve as a reminder that wage and hour law doesn't generally require meal breaks, but when nonexempt workers perform work during an unpaid break. they must be compensated for that time — even if the work was unauthorized.
Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor notes in its regulations that short rest breaks of about five to 20 minutes are common in many industries and must be counted as hours worked because the limited breaks "promote the efficiency of the employee and are customarily paid for as working time." Many states have their own rules for meal and rest breaks, too. California, for example, has specific meal and rest break requirements.
Employers often run into trouble when they employ timekeeping systems that automatically deduct breaks from workers' hours. Several employers have agreed to multi-million-dollar settlements for such claims in recent months. Auto-deduct policies are "fraught with issues and have been the subject of many class actions in California and elsewhere," said Kathryn T. McGuigan, now a partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, previously told HR Dive. An employer's use of an automatic deduction policy can increase the likelihood of a class action lawsuit in certain circumstances, she said.