Rest break

What it means

A 30-minute break for rest and a meal is due to an employee whose shift runs longer than six hours, and to a juvenile employee already on a shift longer than four and a half hours. The Labour Code also forbids placing it at the start or the end of the shift.

It does not count into working time and is therefore unpaid, so a shift with a break is longer on the clock than the hours worked. Work that cannot be interrupted is different: a reasonable time to rest and eat is given without stopping the operation, and it does count as working time.

The meal break must be told apart from breaks that form part of working time: for screen work, physically demanding or monotonous work, or work in noise, health and safety rules set them. These are not deducted, they are paid, and they have no effect on the right to a rest and meal break.

How it works in practice

The break is set out in the shift roster and recorded in the attendance records, because the employer has to be able to show when the employee was working and when not. The same record then feeds the supplements and the overtime.

A break is not the uninterrupted rest between shifts or within the week: that is measured in hours away from work and is solved by the roster, not by lunch. On a shift that is not longer than six hours no statutory entitlement arises, though the employer may agree one anyway.

A shift from seven to half past three contains eight hours worked and a half-hour break. When setting up a client’s attendance system we check that it deducts the break only where the right to one arises, not across the board on shorter shifts too, and that under flexible working hours it records the break as actually taken.

What to watch out for

The expensive breaks are the ones that exist only on paper: a shop with one person at the till, or a dispatch desk nobody can leave. If the employee never actually took the break, the time counts as worked, with every supplement payable retrospectively, and the labour inspectorate adds a fine on top.

Another mistake is chopping the break into short slots to suit operations. The law allows it to be split, but at least one part must reach the statutory minimum length. Five-minute pauses spread across a shift do not meet the entitlement, and the labour inspectorate will treat them as a break not given.