I’ve been working at a little mom and pop shop since last August as a prep cook. Back in February the old owner “Kevin” retired and sold the shop. Now we have 5 owners.
Kevin genuinely cared for his employees. We were all very taken care of. He didn’t require us to take a lunch break. We’d have some down time in between tasks to take a smoke break or eat if we wanted too. We were welcome too take a lunch if we wanted one but it wasn’t required. Most of the up front employees would take a lunch but the back of house people wouldn’t.
When the new owners took over they notified us that if we work 8 hours we need to take a lunch break. For the first few months I would work just under 8 hours so I didn’t have to take a break. The general manager “Jim” told me they wanted me to work more hours. I told him I would if I didn’t have to take a break. He spoke to them and said it was fine. After a while Jim told the owners he didn’t require anyone in the back to take a break and again they said it was fine.
Over the past couple months I’ve been working 8-12 hour days under the impression that I didn’t have to take a break. Today I found out they’ve been taking 30 minutes off everyday I worked 8+ hours. I’m pretty upset about it since I made it clear I didn’t want to be forced to take a lunch and worked all these extra hours because I was told I didn’t have too.
What should I do? Is this even legal?
I plan on having a sit down with them within the next few days. Now I’m not sure if my general manager even got permission from them to not take a lunch or not. I’ll be letting other coworkers that this affects know in case they’d like to join me in talking to the owners. Everyone’s been complaining about their paychecks not seeming right but these new owners have been sketchy and don’t give us our paystubs unless we hound them about it. So no one’s been able to prove anything until now.
Edit: I live in Colorado