Page 150 - Essentials of Payroll: Management and Accounting

Meal Breaks Compensation
Some organizations will pay employees for a fixed amount of time off
for a meal break if they work more than a set number of hours in a day.
For example, if employees work more than 10 hours in a day, they are

awarded an extra half-hour of pay as long as they turn in a receipt as
evidence of having purchased a meal. This extra amount is typically
paid at an overtime pay rate.
If an employer gives time off for a meal break partway through a
shift, such as lunch, this does not have to be paid time as long as the
employees are relieved from all work responsibilities during the time
period. If they are required to be on call during this period, then the
employer would otherwise have had to pay someone else to take that
position, so employees should receive compensation for this type of

meal break.

T IPS &T ECHNIQUES

Though it may be company policy to automatically deduct some
amount of time from the reported working time of its nonexempt
employees to account for a lunch break, there should be a system
in place that verifies the actual absence of employees from their
places of work. This is necessary in case employees claim they had
to work through their lunch breaks and were not compensated for
this effort. Possible verification techniques to require employees to
log themselves in and out of the payroll system at lunch time
(though this tends to result in a number of missing card punches),
to lock down the work area during the lunch break, or to have sub-
stitutes take their places and record for whom they were working
during the lunch break.

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