If you work a full eight hour shift and take a single half hour break during that shift, do you feel your employer should pay you for a full eight hours or do you feel it's right to be paid for only 7.5 hours?
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And major action will certainly make you feel a bit uncomfortable, which is absolutely fine. You've gotta get excited about feeling uncomfortable, you've gotta love feeling slightly uncomfortable, because you know that you're stepping outside the boundaries that you used to create.
Zach Even-Esh
I've made some huge mistakes, but they were necessary, because without them I wouldn't have learned anything.
-Dave Tate
I said no, but I would think it depends on the industry you're in. Maybe if you're doing hard labor you can get paid for a break to refresh, but otherwise I'd go with no.
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I used to be paid for breaks - we worked 8.5 hours but got a one-hour lunch, paid for 8 hours. Basically, they said we had two 15 min breaks and everyone would just combine all that time into the one hour.
Now, I don't get any break at all unless I choose to come in earlier to allow for it (have to schedule it in advance). I miss my lunch hour, even though I also like getting to go home earlier...
when I've worked where we had close time accounting (hourly workers) we always had paid breaks (e.g. 10 min or 15 min) and unpaid "lunches" if you worked long enough to rate a "lunch".
When I've worked salary (no OT), the work day has always been (assumed) that you get paid for 8 hrs and the work day (start to end) is 9 hrs (e.g. 8:30-17:30) - so a 1 hr unpaid lunch is built-in. Not that anyone in business that I've worked with has those limited hours or doesn't work through lunch or after hours. Once I worked at a business where the FT work week was 37.5 hrs rather than 40 hrs - as I recall the assumed unpaid lunch was 45 rather than 60 mins.
My policy, and wage-hour law as I remember it, is that a 10-15 minute break is paid time. A break of 30 minutes or more becomes "lunch", and is unpaid. When I worked hourly, a long time ago, the company auditors would check time cards to be sure that lunches were over 30 minutes. If they were shorter, you got paid and reminded to take the full 30.
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Federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks. However, when employers do offer short breaks (usually lasting about 5 to 20 minutes), federal law considers the breaks as compensable work hours that would be included in the sum of hours worked during the work week and considered in determining if overtime was worked. Unauthorized extensions of authorized work breaks need not be counted as hours worked when the employer has expressly and unambiguously communicated to the employee that the authorized break may only last for a specific length of time, that any extension of the break is contrary to the employer's rules, and any extension of the break will be punished.
Bona fide meal periods (typically lasting at least 30 minutes), serve a different purpose than coffee or snack breaks and, thus, are not work time and are not compensable.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin, 1759
If you work a full eight hour shift and take a single half hour break during that shift, do you feel your employer should pay you for a full eight hours or do you feel it's right to be paid for only 7.5 hours?
just wanted to add that it has nothing to do with what I feel is proper or not - it is just a matter of labor law as Mark posted.
After working PT, FT, hourly & salary for so many years, what the law says is what is practiced and so it just seems normal.
If you work a full eight hour shift and take a single half hour break during that shift, do you feel your employer should pay you for a full eight hours or do you feel it's right to be paid for only 7.5 hours?
If you work more than six hours consecutively your employer is required to give you a 30 minute meal break, but they aren't required to pay you for that break. Two 15 minute breaks - coffee, smoke, bio, snack, whatever you want to call them - aren't required but are pretty much standard practice. Most places also will allow you to combine those breaks, but that's usually at the discretion of the company and/or your immediate supervisor.
I found out about the six-hour rule when I was skipping lunch and putting a straight 9 hours on my time sheet. The HR chick said that was a no-no.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Employers are not normally required to pay employees for time spent on a meal break. However, in some jurisdictions, employees who are required to remain at their work station or to be available for work during a meal break must be paid for that period as if work was being performed.
I am pretty sure here in alberta at least, if you work 5 hours you have to get a break.
Years ago, we were given 2 10 min breaks (paid - considered still on the clock) and a lunch. On my AM break, I was walking outside to buy a soda from the liquor store and was hit by a car in the parking lot.
It was considered a workman's comp case because I was on company time (paid break)when it happened.
Not enough choices for me to vote. I believe that an 8 hour work day is just that, an 8 hour work day. If you want breaks for eating, smoking, reading the paper, personal phone calls that is fine but they should not be part of the paid work day. The smoking thing really pisses me off. I have non-smokers in my section who are having to be taken away from their work to cover phones in a section that includes a lot of smokers who feel they need to go together every couple of hours to stand out front and smoke and chat about everyone else.
I eat lunch at my desk most of the time, come in half an hour early and leave an hour late. Of course I am on salary so I get paid the same no matter what. I'm tired of work place entitlement to be lazy.
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I work flexi time meaning I can come and go as I please. My time card is credited with 30 mins per day for lunch but I can take upto 1.5 hrs
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Mahler, I just had this debate with a co-worker last week. He's a smoker and continuously took a "quick break" to go smoke. Now mind you, this was in a hospital so he had to leave the department, check out at the front desk, walk a half block away from the hospital and then reverse it all - adding a stop at the restroom to wash his hands on his way back in. He tried telling me that we worked the same amount of time. Umm.... no. We didn't. I only took a break for lunch or a quick restroom break when no one was around. Inevitably when he would leave I would get slammed with questions etc.
I hate to nitpick, but I was asking what you feel is right. If there was no law on the subject whatsoever, what do you feel the employer should do?
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And major action will certainly make you feel a bit uncomfortable, which is absolutely fine. You've gotta get excited about feeling uncomfortable, you've gotta love feeling slightly uncomfortable, because you know that you're stepping outside the boundaries that you used to create.
Zach Even-Esh
I've made some huge mistakes, but they were necessary, because without them I wouldn't have learned anything.
-Dave Tate
You have got to eat. I am a beleiver that productivity would be increased in most cases if there is breaks in the workday. I get paid a salary, but i make sure to take a break ever couple of hours. In the end I actually get more done.
I feel my employer should pay me to workout at home, play computer games and watch TV.
I feel your employer should pay me to do so as well.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin, 1759
I have a better solution. You keep me on the payroll as an outside consultant and in exchange for my salary, my job will be never to tell people these things that I know. I don't even have to come into the office, I can do this job from home.
That said, I believe my employer should honour whatever the agreement was when I signed on. If I valued the job enough to say I'd work without paid breaks, then so be it. If I required the paid breaks as an initiative to take the job, fine.
You have got to eat. I am a beleiver that productivity would be increased in most cases if there is breaks in the workday. I get paid a salary, but i make sure to take a break ever couple of hours. In the end I actually get more done.
This largely depends on the business. In a place of work where you are getting paid a salary they of course want you there for their business hours, but it's about productivity not hours logged so much.
I don't get a paid lunch, or if I do I don't know I do. Either way the company recognizes the importance of not overworking and it is stressed to us to take breaks from the computer. To get up and walk around. To get away from the office for at least 1/2 hour a day.
They know that any sort of injury is going to be a larger detriment to production than if I am taking a 2 minute break a few times a day in addition to my 15 min breaks, which I can't say I take all the time.
Of course we also get 1/2 hour massages once a week.
In a setting however where you have a less skilled workforce, that is paid hourly, that has a demanding customer base. I WANT MY FOOD NOW! Why is MY COFFEE TAKING SO LONG!!?? I can see the need for the business to have a tighter leash on breaks and hours spent.
I however personally hate scenario 2.
Og.
__________________ 2009: No races, No times. Slow year. So, now you're 96 cals short. You're now in starvation mode. Doomed. - LostDog
Blog entry: November 1, 2009, Pancakes LiveSTRONG daily plate log
I have a better solution. You keep me on the payroll as an outside consultant and in exchange for my salary, my job will be never to tell people these things that I know. I don't even have to come into the office, I can do this job from home.
How is that working out for ya?
__________________ 2009: No races, No times. Slow year. So, now you're 96 cals short. You're now in starvation mode. Doomed. - LostDog
Blog entry: November 1, 2009, Pancakes LiveSTRONG daily plate log
It's a slow startup but I am expecting a drastic increase in business very soon. Care to invest?
Fortunately you are not locked in a room beating yourself up and getting ready to blame me.
Without this crucial aspect...I will pass.
Og.
__________________ 2009: No races, No times. Slow year. So, now you're 96 cals short. You're now in starvation mode. Doomed. - LostDog
Blog entry: November 1, 2009, Pancakes LiveSTRONG daily plate log
people should get paid for breaks, but not lunches. Lunches should be as long as you want (within reason), as long as you get your job done (this isn't for the employees w/ a customer base, where they leave customers waiting).
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I think some of the surveys from several years ago typically found that smokers were more productive. As a former (1983 quit) we were aware that real guys and gals used!
being paid for breaks
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