Before anyone that sees my previous post yells at me yes, I am looking for other work. No, I'm not going to quit on a moments notice and go weeks or months without a paycheck. I just want to know if this is legal because I'm considering reporting this employer
In my state every employee who works over 7 hours must be offered a 30 minute break. If you're over the age of 18 you have the option to decline said break but it has to be offered to you
Anyway, my workplace doesn't have a clock in clock out system for breaks. 30 minutes of time is automatically subtracted from our logged hours every day. Meaning that no one has the option to decline a break and get paid for those 30 minutes
Yet still people aren't going on breaks. I asked my manager about this thinking maybe they requested to not have the 30 minutes taken from their pay but according to the manager the money is taken out but supposedly all of the employees are fine with this because “there's so much down time”
And yes, that's true. But ultimately I don't feel that having 5-10 minutes to sit down between tasks occasionally is the same thing as a 30 minute break where you are outside of the work environment. Even if you have “down time” you're still working and should be getting paid for that work.
Long story short we have some employees who are working 8-14 hour shifts and not taking a single break. Yet they are losing $15-$20 a week in pay because they're having breaks subtracted from their checks- breaks they don't get.
I always try to take my break but sometimes I don't have a choice. My manager has a habit of leaving for hours on end (he claims he's buying ingredients or going to the bank but he will be gone for 3-4 hours or even longer than that) so sometimes I'll be running the entire store by myself. this is manageable because buissness is slow but it means I can't take a break because no one will be there to take customers etc. This has only happened twice so far but still…this can't possibly be legal right?