Pay Required for Lunch Meetings

Question: I work in a small travel agency and am paid hourly. My employer holds mandatory staff meetings every other week at noon and orders take-out food.

Shouldn’t we be paid for these meetings?

B.G., Redondo Beach

Answer: Yes. As a penalty for denying you an uninterrupted half-an-hour meal period, you are legally entitled to receive one hour’s pay.

In general, hourly employees have a legal right to take a half-an-hour lunch break and two 10-minute breaks during every eight-hour shift. Unlike rest breaks, meal periods are unpaid and taken on non-work time.

Under California law, if your lunch period or a rest break is denied or interrupted by work, your employer must pay you one hour’s pay at your regular wage rate for each workday that the meal or rest period was not provided. The meal-period violation is not excused because your employer provided takeout food.

If your employer will not give you the hour’s pay you are owed for each violation, you should file a complaint with the California Labor Commissioner or consult an employment attorney.

Joseph L. Paller Jr.

Union, employee attorney

Gilbert & Sackman

Bonus, Once Earned, Can’t Be Withdrawn

Q: After I gave my two-week notice and worked the two weeks, my former employer created a new policy of not paying bonuses if the employee is no longer employed on the date of distribution.

Is that legal? I earned my quarterly bonus, working past the end of the quarter.

--T.S., El Segundo

A: Regardless of the distribution date, if the employer promises in advance to pay a bonus and you have earned it, it can’t be withdrawn retroactively.

You should review the wording of the prior bonus policy, including the type of bonus that was promised. Bonuses that are announced to employees to give them an incentive to work more steadily or efficiently, or to remain with the company, are regarded as part of the employees’ regular pay.

These bonuses are considered wages, and an employer who fails to pay them upon an employee’s termination is subject to “waiting time” penalties of up to 30 days of daily wages from the time the bonus was due.

Don D. Sessions

Employee rights attorney

Mission Viejo

Forwarding Workers’ 401(k) Contributions

Q: I am paid biweekly. Until this year, my 401(k) deductions were credited to my account a few days after each paycheck was received.

After being acquired by a larger company, we have been told that our 401(k) accounts will be credited monthly. This means that my contributions from the first paycheck of the month are not credited for five weeks.

In essence, I am giving my employer an interest-free loan of my retirement funds. This adds up to a substantial amount of money for a large company with thousands of employees.

Under the law, how quickly must employers deposit contributions to an employee’s 401(k) account?

K.C., Glendale

A: The law requires that the employer forward employee contributions to the plan as soon as those contributions can reasonably be segregated from the employer’s general assets. However, this date can’t be later than the 15th business day of the month after the month in which such amounts would otherwise have been payable to the employee in cash.

Some employers have mistakenly assumed that, in all cases, they need not forward the contributions until the 15th business day of the following month.

The Labor Department, which is responsible for enforcing this rule, typically requires that contributions be forwarded at a much earlier date. But the deadline depends on the facts and circumstances of each employer.

If you believe your employer is not forwarding the employee contributions in a timely manner, you should contact the Labor Department. The general phone number for the department’s Pasadena office is (626) 229-1000.

Kirk F. Maldonado

Employee benefits attorney

Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison