Let’s pick up where we left off. In our last post of 2016, I was complaining about the California Supreme Court’s decision in Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc. The majority opinion in that case said that employees who were required to carry phones or pagers on their rest breaks, even if they didn’t get called or paged, were deprived of their statutory breaks and were therefore owed a one-hour penalty. While I found plenty to complain about in that decision (I’m good that way), there’s another issue I want to address.

The third sentence of the decisions says: “During required rest periods, employers must relieve their employees of all duties and relinquish any control over how employees spend their break time.” The language comes from Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, which dealt with meal periods. But what does it mean? Are employees exempt from substance abuse, dress code, firearm possession, and harassment prevention policies during breaks? Stated differently, is the employer powerless if workers use their break time to get drunk, strip off their clothes, and chase co-workers around the workplace with guns demanding sexual favors? I’d like to think that the answer is “no,” but Augustus, in interpreting the wage orders, urges us to give language its “plain and commonsense meaning,” If that’s what we’re supposed to do, it would be nice if the courts chose their words with a little more care. The penalties for not complying with wage and hour laws are draconian enough without the laws being too vague for employers to know what’s expected.

Photo credit: bruno135 / 123RF Stock Photo

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