Opinion ID: 4169602
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Uncompensated 30-Minute Meal Breaks

Text: Under the CBA, nursing assistants who are scheduled for eight-hour shifts are entitled to two paid 15-minute breaks and one unpaid 30-minute meal break per shift. The plaintiffs allege that nursing assistants who work during the night shifts 4 “rarely, if ever” took an uninterrupted meal break because those shifts are chronically understaffed.1 For example, whereas each nursing assistant is typically responsible for twelve to seventeen patients during the day and evening shifts, a nursing assistant on a night shift would be responsible for around thirty patients. In fact, the plaintiffs allege that, due to the staff shortage, the night shift supervisors do not schedule meal breaks for the night shift nursing assistants, and that when they do eat, they do so at the nurse’s station, rather than in the break room, in order to hear the call bell alerting them to patients requiring care. Despite the frequent interruptions and restrictions, the plaintiffs allege that the 30-minute meal breaks are automatically deducted from their total hours worked. Consequently, the plaintiffs allege that they are not being paid for all the hours worked, including overtime for those weeks in which they worked more than forty hours.