SAN FRANCISCO Employers got most of what they wanted in the long-awaited Brinker wage-and-hour ruling issued Thursday by the California Supreme Court. But workers won some victories, too, and the court appeared to stick up for class actions more broadly, in contrast to some recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
In Brinker Restaurant v. Superior Court (Hohnbaum), the court ruled that employers need only permit meal breaks for employees not ensure that they actually get taken. “What this ruling says, in essence, is that employers don’t have to babysit employees,” management-side attorney Stephen Hirschfeld, who was not involved in the case, said in an email.
