Pretty self-explanatory. My place of employment is bumping us down to 30 minute unpaid lunches from 45 minute unpaid lunches. We will also now be required to clock in and out for our lunches. Previously, lunches were just scheduled in automatically. We're not allowed to go to the lunch area and then clock out. We have to clock out at our facility then walk to the lunch area. We will be “watched” to make sure that we comply.
My employer is saying that these changes are taking place because there was previously no way to track when employees were working through their lunches [because it's always busy] so this will help that. I stated that the clocking in and out makes sense in regards to tracking but this doesn't explain the shortening of lunches by 15 min. I was told that technically, per our state's law, they are only required to give us a 20 minute unpaid lunch. I said that it's not a good look coming from the angle of, “oh we can give you less lunch time because we can” and that it comes out of out pocket anyway. I was told we will have a meeting tomorrow to discuss it with my team and higher ups and they'll get back to me then once they have their “talking points”.
If anyone has any resources, recommended talking points, or advice I'll gladly take it lol. I should shut my mouth if I want to secure my job here in the future. I'm usually pretty level headed and don't argue about policy. However this feels like the time to kind of put my foot down. They say they expect a lot of pushback and I know no one here is happy about it since we're already overworked but so far “I'm the only one that's questioned it”. It is early days though and everyone I've talked to plans to say something during their meetings.
Thanks in advanced!