Restricting employees during breaks
ninanewbie
29 Posts
I just saw a policy online that aims to restrict smokers from going outdoors to smoke and taking extra breaks. This break policy says that employees are limited to 2 breaks per day and may not leave the premises or their workstations unattended during breaks.
Can you restrict employees this much? What about employees who like to go outside just to have fresh air, take a short walk, or make a cellphone call? Under this policy, they couldn't even go to the lunchroom to talk to friends.
Comments
Meal and break times are dependent on state laws. Many states have no laws requiring either. Therefore, most are dependent on employer policy. And as long as the employer is paying non-exempt employees for any breaks that are less than 20 minutes, they get to make the policy/rules.
So yes, usually (absent a CBA or other such contracts), employers have the final say.
To back up my perspective, I usually head to the Texas Employer Handbook....it does a very good job discussing federal laws when TX doesn't have a referencing law. They discuss breaks by stating "Employers in the vast majority of situations do not have to give breaks during the day, so if a company does allow breaks, it can put whatever strings it wants to on those breaks. That includes limits on how long the breaks can be, how many breaks occur during the day, and where the breaks can or cannot be taken. Thus, if an employee is normally allowed two breaks per eight-hour shift, the employer can legally deny any extra breaks for smoking, for example." from http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/smoking_breaks.html
You could restrict smoking on company property (including the parking lot), but it would be rather demotivating for a company to try and implement such a restrictive policy (whether compliant or not).
If the breaks are unpaid, then there really isn’t much you can say at all.
What state? If the state has no break law, then the only thing that matters is that the employees' breaks are paid (given the level of restriction), which is a FLSA issue.
Employees do not have a right to breathe outside air, take short walks, make cell phone calls, or inhale a nice long breath of fresh air through burning plant material encased in a paper tube while on company time. Whether or not a company's actions to control such behaviors make good business sense or not is highly context sensitive. Production environments tend to be the worst about this sort of thing.
It was on a blog, so I don't know which state the blogger was in.
Even if you can have such a policy, I don' think such a restrictive policy would help with morale--or recruiting.
I worked on a production line for 4 summers in college and as long as you clocked out and in on time, you could do what you wanted on breaks, including going outside.
[quote user="ninanewbie"] Even if you can have such a policy, I don' think such a restrictive policy would help with morale--or recruiting.[/quote]
I think most HR professionals would agree with you in general terms. Of course spurring low morale in turns generates other undesirable side effects like sabotage and theft. However, there are places where employee break time has to be highly regulated. You wouldn't want an over the road trucker to decide to take a break immediately while driving down the road. Similarly with airline pilots on runways or in the air. Automotive production lines deal with this issue all the time. Stopping the line is a big deal and you can't really catch up on work left undone during an unauthorized break without significant cost and delay. There are people who monitor equipment (like dredges and oil drills) whose absence could result in extremely expensive equipment damage and/or safety hazards. In the mining industry where explosives are used, taking a puff while leaving live wired explosives laying around probably wouldn't be looked at well, either. So, without knowing more about the context, it's hard to say whether or not the policy is reasonable.
And also, you do not know the circumstances that precipitated the policy. I find most employer policies are reactive rather than proactive when it comes to policies. I strongly suspect they were reacting to the misuse of break times.
I have to agree with TXHRGuy...there are lots of details that are missing that could make this policy needed or totally superfluous. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand for all employers, but then again I wouldn't suggest it as a prototype either.