Break (work)
[1] It is not uncommon for this break to be unpaid, and for the entire work day from start to finish to be longer than the number of hours paid in order to accommodate this time.
This federal statute was implemented in order to protect employees from abuses that had become commonplace during the Great Depression.
[9] During this time it was not unusual for companies to work their employees for long hours without a break and to pay them minuscule wages.
[10] Penalties can be severe for failing to adequately staff one's business premises so that all employees can rotate through their mandatory meal and rest breaks.
For example, on April 16, 2007, the Supreme Court of California unanimously affirmed a trial court judgment requiring Kenneth Cole Productions to pay an additional hour of pay for each day that a store manager had been forced to work a nine-hour shift without a break.
The California Supreme court ruled that employers satisfy their California Labor Code section 512 obligation to "provide" meal periods to nonexempt employees by (1) relieving employees of all duty; (2) relinquishing control over their activities and permitting them a reasonable opportunity to take an uninterrupted 30-minute break; and (3) not impeding or discouraging them from doing so.
Importantly, the court agreed that employers are not obliged to "police" meal breaks to ensure that no work is performed.
Denying employees rights to use the facilities as needed could adversely affect workplace sanitation and workers' health and could create legal issues for both these and other reasons.
[16] Employers and co-workers often frown on employees who are seen as taking too many of these breaks, and this could be a cause for progressive discipline from a written warning up to termination.
In February 2017, an official in Övertorneå Municipality, Sweden proposed an hour-long break for sexual activity.
The origin of the tea break, as is now incorporated into the law of most countries, stems from research undertaken in England in the early 1900s.
Stanley Kent, an Oxford graduate and the first Professor of Physiology at University College, Bristol, undertook scientific research on industrial fatigue at the request of the Home Office (UK).
This work followed the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography held in Brussels in 1903 where a resolution was passed that "the various governments should facilitate as far as possible investigation into the subject of Industrial Fatigue".
The results of Kent's study were presented to both Houses of Parliament on 17 August 1915 in an "Interim Report on Industrial Fatigue by Physiological Methods".
[18] The coffee break allegedly originated in the late 19th century in Stoughton, Wisconsin, with the wives of Norwegian immigrants.
It is not clear which was actually first, but they both established the coffee break for employees on a regular basis, both morning and afternoon, by 1902.
"[22] John B. Watson, a behavioral psychologist who worked with Maxwell House later in his career, helped to popularize coffee breaks within the American culture.
In some places, a "cart" with hot and cold beverages and cakes, breads and pastries arrives at the same time morning and afternoon, an employer may contract with an outside caterer for daily service, or coffee breaks may take place away from the actual work-area in a designated cafeteria or tea room.
