Many times employers try to squeeze unpaid work out of their employees by having them perform work during parts of an unpaid meal break period. However, the Secretary of Labor has promulgated regulations stating that:
Bona fide meal periods are not worktime. Bona fide meal periods do not include coffee breaks or time for snacks. These are rest periods. The employee must be completely relieved from duty for the purposes of eating regular meals. Ordinarily 30 minutes or more is long enough for a bona fide meal period. A shorter period may be long enough under special conditions. The employee is not relieved if he is required to perform any duties, whether active or inactive, while eating. For example, an office employee who is required to eat at his desk or a factory worker who is required to be at his machine is working while eating.
29 C.F.R. § 785.19 (emphasis supplied). Many courts have read this language to require an employee to be “completely relieved” from duty for the entire 30 minute meal period or the entire meal break should be paid. See Abendschein v. Montgomery County, 984 F. Supp. 356 (D.Md. 1997); Burks v. Equity Group, 571 F. Supp. 2d 1235 (M.D. Ala. 2008). The holding in Burks is of special note because the 30 minute meal breaks at issue in that case were only interrupted by approximately five minutes donning and doffing activities at the beginning and end of each break – providing workers with approximately 20 minutes of uninterrupted time to themselves. Yet, the Court held that the entire 30 minutes could be compensable.
Meal break violations such as this are typically found with employer timekeeping systems (such as Kronos) that are preprogrammed to automatically reduce an employee’s paid time by 30 minutes the purported meal break. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York overtime attorneys should be on the look out for unpaid meal break cases like these.

The Motor Carrier Act (“MCA”) exemption to the FLSA’s overtime pay requirement prevents many truck drivers from receiving time-and-one-half overtime pay when they work over 40 hours in a workweek. But the MCA exemption is not absolute. For example, in a case handled by our law firm, a federal court in Philadelphia explained that, due to a complicated series of legislative amendments, drivers are entitled to overtime pay for workweeks arising after June 2008 if their job duties included, in part, driving vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of under 10,000 pounds. See Mayan v. Rydbom Express, Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90525 (E.D. Pa. Sept. 30, 2009). Based on the above, package delivery drivers who always or sometimes drive vans or pick-up trucks are entitled to overtime pay. Be on the lookout for violations of this glitch in the FLSA. Our firm would be delighted to consult with any of your package delivery clients who have been denied overtime pay.

In opposing FLSA conditional certification, defendants often gather affidavits or declarations from the plaintiffs’ co-workers to rebut the allegations in the plaintiffs’ FLSA complaint or to demonstrate that plaintiffs are not similarly situated to the co-workers.  We have faced this litigation tactic on various occasions in our Pennsylvania and New Jersey overtime cases, most recently in a Philadelphia overtime case involving the right of hospital employees to be paid for time spent performing work activities during their meal breaks/lunch breaks.  Here is some caselaw that might help you next time you face this issue:

It’s not too surprising that defendants and their lawyers are able to obtain “happy camper” declarations/affidavits.  As one district court has observed:  “It is, of course, unlikely that potential class members would be unanimously supportive when most potential class members have an interest in maintaining amicable relationships at work.”  Jensen v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 139 F.R.D. 657, 664 (D. Minn. 1991); accord Siddiqi v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal., 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19930, *24-25 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 6, 2000) (citing cases).  Moreover, common sense dictates that “where the absent class member and the defendant are involved in an ongoing business relationship, such as employer-employee, any communications are more likely to be coercive.”  Belt v. Emcare Inc., 299 F. Supp. 2d 664, 668 (E.D. Tx. 2003); accord Kleiner v. First Nat’l Bank of Atlanta, 751 F.2d 1193, 1201-03 (11th Cir. 1985); see also Shores v. Publix Super Markets, Inc., 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22396, *9 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 25, 1996) (unlike information “that employees may review and analyze in the privacy of their own home, [an employer's] communications are disseminated at the workplace, by the very managers accused of propagating [illegal] practices”).  Consistent with this common sense notion, district courts handling FLSA conditional certification motions find little or no value in employer-obtained declarations.  See, e.g., Sjoblom v. Charter Comm., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 94829 (W.D. Wis. Dec. 26, 2007); In re Wells Fargo Home Mortg. Overtime Pay Litig., 527 F. Supp. 2d 1053, 1060-61 (N.D. Cal. 2007); Mevorah v. Wells Fargo Home Mortg., Inc., 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28615, *12-16 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 17, 2005).