In some jurisdictions, employees are entitled to a 30-minute unpaid meal break for every five hours worked.
If an employer fails to provide an employee with their meal break, or the employee does not receive the full 30-minute meal break, the employee is entitled to one extra hour of pay at the employee's regular rate of pay.
The missed meal break penalty automatically identifies when a meal break has been missed or cut short, and applies the extra one hour of pay to the relevant timecard.
A maximum of one missed meal break penalty is applied per workday, even if multiple meal breaks are missed/cut short.
Navigation
After logging into Shift4 Customer Hub, navigate to Workforce Management -> Scheduler. Then click on Settings > Compliance > Labor rules > Breaks.
You must have the Administrator role to enable the missed meal break penalty rule.
Toggle the rule on and choose the rule that applies to your Company.
Meal break requirements are calculated based on the following:
Up to 5 hours worked:
No meal break required
Over 5 and up to 6 hours worked:
One meal break required
Waivable by mutual consent
Over 6 but under 10 hours worked:
One meal break required
Not waivable
Over 10 but under 12 hours worked:
Two meal breaks required
The second meal break is waivable (only if the first was not waived)
Over 12 hours worked:
No additional meal break requirements
Second meal break cannot be waived.
The penalty applies if the employee completely misses the break or takes less than the required minimum time (30 minutes).
Rule options:
Total shift time
Both paid and unpaid time count toward 'hours worked'.
Paid time
Only paid time counts towards 'hours worked', i.e. unpaid breaks are not included in determining 'hours worked'.
For example:
Jane's shift is from 9am-7:15pm (10.25 hours).
She takes a 30-minute unpaid break at 1pm.
Using Total shift time (10.25 hours), she is entitled to 2 meal breaks.
Using Paid time (9.75 hours), she is entitled to 1 meal break.
This rule only applies to missed meal breaks. For missed rest breaks, please enable the missed rest break compliance rule.