Lunch

Does your employer require you to work during lunch breaks?

Do you spend your lunch break or other “off the clock” time engaged in a work-related meeting? Worse yet, have you had to get lunch for your boss on your lunch break? When you are working for your employer, such as while eating lunch, and your employer knows it, you are entitled to be paid for that time. If those work hours push you over 40 hours per week, then you are also entitled to overtime pay at time and a half for those extra hours.

There are many ways that employers may illegally fail to pay you for all of your actual work time. For example, you may take short breaks which you are not paid for even though overtime laws generally say you must be paid for short breaks. You might report to work on time, are ready to work, and yet are not allowed to clock in. You may have significant work-related tasks to do before or after being “on the clock” for which you are not paid.

Assembly line workers at an IBP meatpacking plant recently won a $3.1 million overtime award for these kinds of violations. Or, you may be a retail employee who has finished work for the day, are forced to go “off the clock,” yet wait trapped in the store unpaid until the manager lets you out. Don’t let this abuse go on any longer! Best Buy recently paid a settlement of$5.4 million for not paying employees for their time waiting to leave the store in the evening and for other unpaid work time. The number of ways that employers illegally cheat you out of overtime pay is limited only by their imaginations!