It’s enough to make you lose your appetite. A recent case litigating meal breaks under the Federal Labor Standards Act shows how easy it is to “fall on the wrong side of the FLSA and the dire consequences for such missteps,” according to Jim Ehrenberg in Barnes & Thornburg’s Currents Blog.
Under the FLSA, employers can deduct periods of 30 minutes or longer for meal breaks. However, if employees take a break of less than 20 minutes, they must be compensated. So, when an employee must return early from a meal break to work—trouble brews. And when whole groups of employees routinely must return to work early from their breaks, ”you may find that you have a Fair Labor Standards Act collective action lawsuit on your hands,” says Ehrenberg.
