• Avicenna@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 days ago

    requirements for doing your work efficiently cannot be considered out of work, including transport.

  • grue@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    66
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    Reminder: the traditional “9 to 5” workday that is considered “full time” includes lunch. If you’re not getting paid for it or are working 8 to 5 or whatever, you’re getting swindled.

    You might say it’s “normal” now, but it only becomes normalized because workers fail to hold the line.

    • parricc@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      6 days ago

      It keeps eroding away. I’ve had skilled jobs where the expectation was 8-5 without any breaks at all. “If you need to eat, you can do it at your desk while you’re working.”

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      8 days ago

      but it only becomes normalized because workers fail to hold the line. the rich business owners in charge have been busting unions and brainwashing people with anti-union propaganda for decades.

      Unions have been attempted more times than they’ve succeeded, not because of workers failing, but because powerful people have power and will do whatever dirty tactics they can to keep it.

      • grue@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        7 days ago

        Unions have been attempted more times than they’ve succeeded

        I get what you mean, but I can’t resist the urge to point out that that’s basically a truism. The number of successes must be greater or equal than the number of attempts by definition, since a success without an attempt is not possible.

      • JamesTBagg@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        8 days ago

        Because unions stopped shooting back and bombing. Because when cops and Pinkertons shoot strikers the state turns a blind eye.

    • hodgepodgin@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      8 days ago

      My full time job is considered part-time because of this. Plus I just found out we don’t receive jury duty compensation because we’re seasonal workers that’ll just get fired at the end of the season anyways.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    47
    ·
    8 days ago

    My entire career, I got a one-hour lunch, and two, paid, ten-minute breaks.

    I know some will say you’d rather not because that’s just more time at work, but with a one-hour lunch you can leave work, that’s the whole point. It’s a real break. One hour is enough time to go to a restaurant, or you can eat at work, and take a short walk. Half-an-hour is barely enough to time to eat and use the bathroom.

    I guess what I’m saying is unionize.

    • renrenPDX@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 days ago

      Or live in a state that doesn’t screw you over. 1 hr lunch, two 15 minute breaks for 8 hour shift. Or half hour lunch minimum required after 6 hours work.

      This is with or without union.

      Being on the clock for lunch is a terrible idea. I like my own time thanks.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 days ago

        In my state in my career path at least the lunch is just used to keep is there for longer operational hours. They want us there 9 but pay for 8 and say we have an hour lunch, that way we’re 8 to 5 instead of 9-5.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    8 days ago

    There’s all kinds of legal murk with this.

    If you don’t get a break and you make a mistake that injures or kills you or someone else, the employer is responsible.

    If you “don’t get” a break, either by force or voluntarily (the reason actually doesn’t matter), then many places consider that to be… For lack of a better description (my brain can’t think of one right now): bad working conditions, and illegal.

    Even if you voluntarily skip you break/lunch, the thin line between that being fine, or a problem for the company, is whether you want to hire a lawyer and make it a problem or not.

    That’s liability that they don’t want.

    I guarantee they couldn’t give any less of a shit whether you take your lunch/breaks or not, except for the fact that it could affect them.

    I’m thankful for this, because bluntly, otherwise, they just wouldn’t give you a break at all. They would put it on the books as you working a 9 hour shift, and taking your lunch at the end of the day, but tell you that you are on an 8 hour shift that has no breaks. Since they can’t cover their ass like that, you get an unpaid lunch.

    The unpaid part was the compromise to get the legislation passed so they don’t subject workers to inhumane conditions. Remember that the government is largely comprised of, or paid for by, businesses and business owners. So if it isn’t, at the very least “fair” to business owners, it’s not going to pass.

    • fishos@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      8 days ago

      There’s also the problem that if your coworkers skip theirs voluntarily, then you feel pressured to do the same and it’s no longer voluntary. Breaks and lunch are legally required because otherwise you just don’t get them at all because of the legal murkiness you mention.

      When I worked at Target about a decade ago, if you missed your break, YOU got written up. They’d been sued so many times for not giving breaks that they FORCED you to take a break or be written up for it. If you were within 10 minutes of working into your lunch break, you can bet your ass someone was on a walkie talkie telling you to get your ass out and stop working. At the time they loved 4h45m shifts because it gave them 15 minutes buffer before you had to take a lunch.

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      8 days ago

      Yeah thats my job. If you have an incident and we check your vehicle logs and you arent taking your breaks its an automatic write up. Because nationally its been proven that drivers who DO take their breaks have less incidents.

  • Xerxos@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    44
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 days ago

    Breaks are unpaid because that was another way to minimize what workers have to be paid.

    Businesses always look for ways to pay their employees less and only change practices when forced.

    Without strong unions and support from politicians things tend to get worse and worse.

    Too bad that we have neither.

  • Flames5123@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    8 days ago

    I’m a salaried software developer. My first job was 8-5 with a lunch break that we had to take. I asked if I could take it at the start or the end of the day and was told, “No.” So my coworkers and I started playing board games 3-4 times a week during our lunch break in one of the offices. Mainly legacy games like Gloomhaven and Pandemic Legacy. The VP loved showing off the board game room to the interviewees to show that we like to have fun there.

    I do miss that job sometimes because it was just raw programming. I was programming or writing SQL queries for over 30 hours a week. No AppSec, no lengthy review process, no bullshit (except the pay, which was ok for Mississippi).

    • SuperApples@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      8 days ago

      When I worked for a big game studio, we had a clan, as did many of the other big studios in the country. Every lunch we’d join the same servers. Battlefield, TF2, StarCraft… good times. Well, good lunch times.

        • SuperApples@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 days ago

          Thankfully, lunchtime is pretty well enforced by law in Australia… didn’t prevent the “reasonable overtime is included in your base salary” contract clause, where “reasonable” is defined by the publisher, though.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    7 days ago

    Also you need to be here 15 minutes early, dressed and at the time clock.

    And no you have to leave on time in case someone needs you. We have core hours.

  • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    Check your local laws. In many states, there is no requirement that you take a lunch. There is no federal requirement for that either.

    I’ve had employers tell me that that I legally had to clock out for a certain amount of time, but that’s bullshit. It might be company policy but it’s not a law.

    Also, this applies to teens working too. The laws are bad. Found this out when Subway was making my 16 yr old niece work 9-12 hour shifts with no lunch break.

    Source: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/breaks

    • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      8 days ago

      In California, you can only waive it if you work less than 6 hours. Otherwise, you need to take a lunch before the 5th hour hits. For overtime, you get a second (you can waive, they cant) meal period after your 10th hour.

    • bss03@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      8 days ago

      Again, check local laws, but in general you can be fired for cause (meaning no unemployment insurance eligibility) for violating company policy. So “legally” might be wrong but “had to clock out (if you want to keep working here)” might be accurate.

      • nickiwest@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        8 days ago

        In “at will” states in the US, you can be fired without cause and without notice. So do your homework before you decide not to follow company policy.

        • bss03@infosec.pub
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          8 days ago

          I’ve always been in an “at will” state (Arkansas) and my more recent firing was without cause and without notice. But, since it wasn’t for cause, I was/am eligible for unemployment insurance.

          I’m not claiming, because I can’t actually accept any job offer, due to the constraints of familial duties, and Arkansas requires you accept an offer when you on UI. (I think there are conditions where you can reject, but I’ve not read the statues, just the guidelines published by the relevant Arkansas government department, which aren’t that explicit.)

        • JamesTBagg@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          8 days ago

          This is false. You cannot be fired without reason, you can be fired for any legal reason which will vary from state to state, which may be more strict (for employers) than federal law.

          • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            7 days ago

            “No reason” IS a legal reason to fire someone in an At-Will state (which is the entire US excepting Montana).

  • fckreddit@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 days ago

    Seriously though, I really hate that managers hate employees leaving early. Just how controlling do you want to be? Employees are not kids.

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      8 days ago

      I lead small teams doing construction/remodel type work.

      It gets real screwy when people start leaving at different times. Those who take lunch end up stuck with extra clean up or fixing last minute issues that pop up.

      It also sucks when the office folk leave early and we’re stuck in the field with questions or issues that they need to decide on.

      Once in a while, it doesn’t matter, but every day of people working slightly different schedules gets annoying.

      For independent work, yeah its ridiculous people are forced to work specific hours for no reason.

      • whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        8 days ago

        In my experience when you loosen the restrictions on specific starting and ending times you get some people who prefer earlier and some people who prefer later and most people will probably be pretty close to traditional most of the time to maintain cooperation across large groups. Sometimes they call it ‘core hours’ when formalizing it in da rules. When most people are working independently then you can get rid of even that.

        • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          7 days ago

          Yeah just takes a little extra planning. I start an hour earlier than the rest of my team but they know that so they make sure to cover anything they need from me before I leave for the day (usually, sometimes we’ll have a vendor call or something I have to stay late for but it’s fine). On the other hand I’m there to catch most issues before most of the other employees arrive and start calling us.

      • Patches@ttrpg.network
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        7 days ago

        That’s why most places use “core hours” for varied schedules.

        If you need collaboration then you do it from 10 AM to 2 PM. Everyone works those hours whether you leave early, or come in late. Any meetings should happen in those times.

        This isn’t a difficult problem to solve.

        If you can’t regularly get your job don’t with a few hours of not having immediate assistance - I feel like you probably need to rethink your processes, or who you’re employing.

        • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          7 days ago

          I’ll be a bit less vague, my job involves installing various equipment systems that are designed/programmed by the office people.

          Part of the process is testing and bug fixing, nothing in life goes perfect. Install typically takes 4-6 hours, with time allotted for a few hours to test and configure being at end of day. We are often at the mercy of the business hours of wherever we work, so install typically doesn’t begin until 8am.

          When its 3pm and the job is supposed to be done by end of day and some technical issue pops up (typically client wants a change, or sometimes we all make a mistake) if the guy who programmed the electronics went home at 2, the job won’t get done.

          As I said, once in a while people leaving early is fine, if we have to return to a job we will. But if we have to do that for every single one, we’d never get anything done.

          Some jobs require assistance because that’s how life works. not everyone is a computer genius.

  • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    8 days ago

    Not eating lunch and taking a break is bad for your health and potentially undermines your productivity. It’s a bad idea all around.

      • Kühlschrank@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        8 days ago

        I’ve always noted with a certain cynicism that the old nomenclature for the workday ‘9-5’ adds up to eight hours. Surely these people weren’t missing lunch…

      • Logical@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        8 days ago

        This is how it is at my current job in Denmark. Never experienced it before working in Denmark.

      • Saleh@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 days ago

        In a way it is paid/unpaid either way.

        At the end of the day, the time you spend “for” work includes your transit to and from work as well as the breaks that you take without being able to really do your thing.

        You have to calculate that time against your pay. This is also why working from home shouldn’t be something companies have any doubt about. Taking away the commute time maintains the time you can be productive for the company, while notably shorting your total time spent “for” work.

    • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 days ago

      Intermittent fasting is a decent way to lose weight without thinking too hard about calorie counting. You stop feeling hungry during the day after a week or two.

    • PM_ME_YOUR_ZOD_RUNES@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      8 days ago

      That’s not a problem at all. I’ve been intermittent fasting for almost 10 years now. Started with 36 hour fasts 3 times a week. Then eventually started following my shift work schedule. If I was evenings I’d eat breakfast and lunch, if I was days I’d only eat supper. Now I’m days only so I only eat supper.

      My parents who are almost in their 70’s started doing it a few years back and they lost a ton of weight. The thing I love about fasting is it changes how you deal with hunger. My body being hungry doesn’t really phase me, I’m able to ignore it rather easily. I don’t get stomach aches or headaches. I can mentally tell myself that this is my fasting window and it makes it really easy to not eat.

      It’s hard to explain without you actually doing it but it was one of the best choices I’ve made. I’ll never go back.

    • synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 days ago

      I had dinner last night around 630pm. I’m not planning to eat anything until around 1pm today - and that might be optimistic. I subsist on sleep, coffee, and rage until then.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 days ago

    Wait, there’s jobs where people don’t get payed for their lunch break? I thought that was a scary myth.

      • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        7 days ago

        My god. You poor souls. Its illegal to do that here. Even the most demanding “squeeze every minute out of the worker” jobs don’t do that. 30 min out of your 8 hours is reserved for lunch and lunch is payed for by the employer (the food as well), by law. 8 hour shift effectively comes out to a maximum of 7.5 hours of actual work.

        • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 days ago

          Yeah it used to be like that here, too. But billionaires have been attacking union power for decades to the point they were able to pull this bullshit

        • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          7 days ago

          You think most salary jobs aren’t giving you specific working hours these days, which generally span 9 hours a day but pay you based on 40 hours a week?

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 days ago

      Canada here, my lunch routine includes hitting up my digital “punch clock” (I work remote, but we have an app thing), then setting a timer to remind myself that my lunch is ending when I have about 2 minutes left on the clock. I then go and “enjoy” my lunch, and when my timer alerts, trudge back to my computer and press the “lunch is over” button.

      To be fair, of the last 4 jobs I’ve worked, plus my current workplace, this is the only one that actually had a punch clock of any sort or variety. The rest just trusted that I took my lunch for an appropriate amount of time and took the normal amount off of my worked hours for the day.

      My favorite workplace of the above set, paid me a set salary every payday, regardless of if I was in office, on vacation, sick, working partial days some days, or whatever. I’d always collect the same amount at regular intervals. They didn’t bother with all the micromanagement and complexity of counting the seconds on/off shift… Which is both good and bad, since that basically negates any overtime, but in all other circumstances, works in my favor. To be clear, OT/after hours/extra time working was rare, and not really something that happened.

      I work IT support, so it definitely happened, it was just so rare that I couldn’t cite any specific circumstances when it happened.

        • oppy1984@lemdro.id
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          7 days ago

          To quote the bird from the Flintstones “It’s a living”. Honestly I don’t hate my job, bored and annoyed with some stuff, but they treat us plebs with a fair amount of decency, plus they pay us decently compared to the rest of the industry.

    • Ronno@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 days ago

      I work in The Netherlands, same thing. On the other side, I can skip lunch and leave earlier. Or can I have a longer lunch break. But I have to work 8 hrs net.

  • ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    8 days ago

    If they let you take lunch at the end of the day to leave sooner that creates a loophole to say they gave you your lunch break without actually doing so

    • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      8 days ago

      There’s no federal law in the US that requires them to give you a lunch break. My state doesn’t have one either.

        • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 days ago

          Nope! The only laws that really apply to those are which breaks are paid and which are not. If you are given any breaks, 20 minutes or less must be paid and count towards OT. Anything over can be off the clock.