Unpaid lunch

In a lot of states it’s illegal for workers to work too many consecutive hours without a break, especially if it’s a physical labor job. Your employer may legally not be able to allow this.

Though sometimes they are just petty and inflexible.

And that's actually a good thing because once you allow this it's easy for employers to pressure you into "voluntarily" not taking a break, because "it's so busy right now" or whatever.
- That’s when I say “hahaha no”, write it down as a request. Then, when yearly evaluations comes along, I write into my evaluation so it’s on the record
This is less common than you think, and gets pretty hazy pretty fast where it is true.
The real reason is payroll and accounting.
If you leave an hour early to take your lunch, it looks like you only worked 7 hours.
Could this be fixed? Probably. But accountants are notoriously salty about anything that threatens to crack the mold.
- 8-4 is still 8 hours?
  The average work day is 8-5 with an unpaid lunch break.
- In my timesheets, when I work is logged and automatically calculated. If I put in 8am to 12pm. Then enter 1pm to 5pm, with a 1 hour gap for lunch it calculates 8 hours, if I put in 8am to 4pm, and have "lunch" at the end of the day, it still calculates 8 hours.
They used to only have you be at work for 8 hours, and paid you for your lunch break. Then companies got greedy and realized they could squeeze it extra time for free by not paying for your lunch break and extending the work day. Wages didn't rise to compensate for that stolen time
It's not illegal where I live but it's against my union rules (though it's not a labour job). They have super strict rules about exactly when we should take our breaks. I get it in principle because there are asshole bosses who would try to force people to work through their breaks or shame them into it, but it really sucks for those of us who just don't mind pushing through so we can leave early or like to take late lunches.
- Yeah, that's one thing that sucks about union jobs. On the other hand, I'm no longer at a union job and can break/lunch whenever I want, but my boss can make unrealistic expectations and I have no way to argue if I can't get another manager in the line to back me up. My current workplace is very quickly turning into a shittty place to work since there isn't a union to push back.
At Lowe's and they had to crack down on this due to a new(ish) Florida law. Can't work more than 6 hours of an 8 hour shift without a break. If I took a late lunch, of my own accord, they would get dinged for "forcing" me to work too long. Fair enough.
Yet another reason I love working for salary. So much less bullshit, so much more flexibility. If I want to knock off a couple hours early, go kayaking, work in the evening to run updates, fine.
- Salary can kinda feed the ego too a bit, anybody?
  IDK why, like you’re kinda important-ish & trusted-ish in a way or something… nobody’s worrying how long you’re in the bathroom, get your work done or get fired, angle for that promotion for a bigger salary, no timecards (besides California engineers and perhaps others) that feel kinda like you’re there to be a body as opposed to being there for your mind?
  (Stream of consciousness here)
What state that? I live Oklahoma that follows only federal law, and I been told repeatedly that there is no federal mandate for giving employees breaks at all.
- I’ve worked in some states (mainly North Carolina) that have mandated 15 minute breaks every 2* hours on shift, 30 if you stay for 6 hours, and another 15 if you stay for a full 8. This was at a grocery store so YMMV.
  I think those numbers are right, but it’s been over ten years since I worked there.
  Edited: cause I remembered the numbers.
- You are correct in that statement. There is no federal mandate for breaks or meals, which is super shitty. However, there is a requirement for at least a meal break in 21 of the states which vary in requirements, some even extending to normal breaks.

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.

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.
- Because unions stopped shooting back and bombing. Because when cops and Pinkertons shoot strikers the state turns a blind eye.
- 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.
Would anyone have a reference on this? (I failed to find one. Internet searches now suck.)
- Here's a source I found for the UK at least:
  https://neweconomics.org/2019/03/average-weekly-hours-fell-faster-between-1946-and-1979-than-post-1980
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."
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.
That's why they make it 9-5:30

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.

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.

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

Sleep?

In California, when you take your lunch is also mandated by the law. So even if your employer was okay with the idea, you still have to take it before your 5th working hour.

Yep. While negotiating our last CBA I brought this up as an option. The union told me we're not even allowed to voluntarily wave our lunch break.
- Well then it's not yours. And it should be paid. If the labour regulations say you have to take an unpaid break, the labour regulations are bad.
California is so bizarre, you get mandated lunch breaks but god forbid you want full time employment without risk of being fired at any time for no reason
- I think that's a common US blue state issue. NY is the same. Mandated 15-min, and lunch breaks every few hours, but still "At-Will"
Interesting, in Ohio you have to clock out before the 6th hour.
- It used to be 5th hour about a decade ago but DeWine be DeWining

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).

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.
- They let you out of your crunch cages?!

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.

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.
- With or without, that right is still due to Union actions my friend
- 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.
That's why we use the bathroom before or after lunch. ;)
- the boss makes a dollar,
  I make a dime.
  that's why I shit on company time.

An american joke i am too european to understand

German law also requires you to take a half hour break in the middle of a >6h work day.
- It's more about reducing fatigue and minimising workplace accidents than workers rights.
Classic Europeans on the Internet trying to make fun of [bad thing that happens in the US] without realising it also happens in Europe
Germany:
If you work between 6 to 9 hours a day, you are entitled to a 30-minute break after no later than 6 hours. If you work more than 9 hours a day, the break is extended to 45 minutes. Labour law prohibits taking the break at the end of the day’s work in order to leave earlier.
France:
As soon as your daily working time reaches 6 hours immediately, you must have a break of at least 20 minutes consecutive
The break is granted:
Either immediately after 6 hours of work[, or]
before this 6-hour period is completed
United Kingdom:
Employers can say when employees take rest breaks during work time as long as:
the break is taken in one go somewhere in the middle of the day (not at the beginning or end)
workers are allowed to spend it away from their desk or workstation (ie away from where they actually work)
American states set their own labour laws, but the ones of the state where I live (Oregon) are actually far more generous than comparable ones in Europe. I am entitled by law during an eight-hour working day to one 30-minute lunch break (not paid) and two additional 10-minute breaks (counts as time worked and is paid). Meaning I get 50 minutes of breaks in a day and the employer has to pay me during 20 minutes of those breaks. My employment contract actually gives me a 1-hour lunch break in addition to the two 10-minute breaks, which isn't required by law but is not uncommon.
- France goes even harder saying you aren't even allowed to eat at your desk
Lunch breaks are required by law, but they are not required to pay you when you take them. So when you work an 8 hour day, you are actually working an 8.5 hour day (8:30 - 17:00) with your .5 hour break at some point in the middle. The joke is basically the guy asking to work 8 hours straight and leave at 16:30 instead of 17:00 and management tossing him out a window.
I don't think so. Finnish labour laws at least specify breaks, paid and unpaid, can not be at the start or the end of the day. It wouldn't be a break otherwise.

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.

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.
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.

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

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.
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.
- 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.
America is not the norm, dude.

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

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.
- 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.
- 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.
It's about power.
- That just goes to show how fragile power is.

Still got to leave early, I'll call that a win.

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

Yep, I work for a fortune 500 and I have to clock out for lunch.
- Don’t you feel fortunate? /s
- Same.
Almost all jobs in America...
- 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.
- *Almost all non-salary jobs in America
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.
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.
- And I live in Canada and I can do the same!

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

And that's why lunch should be paid if it's inside the workday.
- 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...
- This is how it is at my current job in Denmark. Never experienced it before working in Denmark.
- 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.

Wait, so you don't eat for 8 hours?

No, I normally eat for about ten minutes.
- That's pretty quick.
I eat one big dinner each day, so I go around 23 hours between meals. It takes a little acclimation, but I don't get "hangry" anymore and can go much longer without effect if something comes up and I have to delay eating.
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.
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.
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.

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

There’s no federal law in the US that requires them to give you a lunch break. My state doesn’t have one either.
- If I recal, there are federal laws in the US that require breaks, just not specifically for lunch?

But then you phone them at 14:00 and they've already left

This is literally what I do every day. I intermittent fast, so I don't eat until dinner. I work through lunch, take breaks whenever I need to get up and stretch my legs, and leave at ~4:15.

Half an hour?

Damn.

I didn't ask and no one seemed to care.

One problem is that if others are dependent on you being there, this screws 'em. Guys at the other Lowe's store did it all the time. By the middle of the afternoon the garden center was dead, who care's if there's only one guy for an hour?

ha, i did something similar with one of my jobs and got pretty much that reaction

I can't because it wouldn't make much sense, we need people working together to do stuff so break times are synchronized

so then it's not my time because I can't take it when I want. since that's the case, why isn't it paid?
- Where I live it counts as work time (and you get paid for it) if you can't leave the workplace during it. I can leave so it doesn't count as paid work time, but it's still at a set time for convenience.
  And ofc because law demands break every so often