Court of Appeals Issues New Ruling On Penalties For Missed Breaks, New Filings Increasing

On September 30, 2024, the Washington State Court of Appeals (Division I) issued a new opinion, Androckitis v. Virginia Mason Medical Center, 556 P.3d 714 (2024), addressing the appropriate penalties for an employee who misses a meal break or a rest period, including a ruling that the employee may be entitled not only to extra pay and penalties but also double damages on both.

Employees in Washington are entitled to a 30-minute meal break for any shift of five hours or more, which may be unpaid so long as the employee is left uninterrupted for the full period. The rules can be complex, especially when it comes to paid meal breaks, interrupted meal breaks, and waivers. Similarly, employees are also entitled to a 10-minute rest break every four hours, and the rules around these breaks are equally complicated as (but different than) the meal break rules.

Rheannon Androckitis worked as an hourly employee at Virginia Mason who brought a class action on behalf of all hourly employees, alleging that she and others were denied the appropriate meal and rest breaks. According to the decision, Virginia Mason had a policy that would automatically deduct 30 minutes from each employee’s recorded time, and if the employee did not take a lunch break that day they were required to cancel this deduction from the timekeeping system. Employees were not given an option to take a later 30 minute break or extra compensation. Similarly, if an employee did not have a chance to take the required rest breaks, they were required to report this via the timekeeping system, which in turn reported it to the employee’s manager. The manager would then have to manually approve the report and the employee would receive an additional 15 minutes of pay[1]. More than a year after the case was filed, Virginia Mason issued payments to employees who had reported missing a rest break but were never paid for it. The Court certified the class and granted summary judgment finding that: (1) all reported missed meal periods must be compensated, (2) all employees who reported missed meal periods were entitled to another 30 minutes of pay as a penalty, (3) that Virginia Mason owed prejudgment interest on the rest break pay already issued, and (4) that the failure to pay these periods and the failure to pay the penalties were both willful refusal to pay wages, meaning that these damages were also doubled.

The Court of Appeals affirmed this result. In doing so, it made clear that Washington law does not simply require you to pay people if they work through their meal break, but that employees have a right to that period as a “respite.” Unless an employee waives that right, an employer must pay them an extra 30 minutes of pay for denying them this right. For rest breaks, the penalty is another 10 minutes of pay (or whatever amount the employer agreed to provide, in this case 15). These penalties are potentially doubled if an employer does not pay them promptly upon realizing the error, and these penalties may also be paid at overtime rates if the employee had already reached 40 hours in the workweek.

Takeaways

It must be noted that this is a recent decision and it is unclear if it will be appealed. Assuming that the decision remains intact, however, there are several key points.

First, the Court was forceful in stating that there is a “low standard for willfulness” and that once an employer is made aware of a discrepancy, it should not delay in paying the appropriate amounts or these damages will be doubled.

Second, employers should be rigorous in ensuring that their employees are, in fact, taking breaks. Missed breaks should be easy to report, and ideally there should be documentation not only for a missed break but also when there was not a missed break; consider having a prompt in your timekeeping system or a sign-off sheet each pay period for the employee to confirm they received all of their breaks.

Third, employers should be diligent in collecting waivers if employees are, in fact, waiving their meal periods (rest periods may not be waived). Here’s the Court rejected the argument that there may have been some waived periods because Virginia Mason did not provide evidence of such instances. Without evidence, the Court was comfortable ruling for the Plaintiff on that issue.

Finally, employers should be aware of the high cost of any form of wage claim. In this case, an employee who worked through his unpaid 30 minute meal period could be entitled to 2 hours of pay as a penalty (30 minutes for time worked, 30 minutes as a penalty for his “respite,” and then doubling of both for willfulness).

These higher damages are already drawing attention. As of November 22, 2024, there have already been 7 new cases filed in Washington State over missed breaks, more than any of the previous five months. Several complaints explicitly included citations to Androckitis, and we expect more cases to be filed in the coming months.

If you are concerned about your meal and rest period policies, your forms of waiver, or existing complaints about missed pay, please contact one of our attorneys at your earliest convenience.

 

[1] Though the law only requires 10 minutes for rest breaks, employers are allowed to be more generous. Virginia Mason guarantees fifteen minutes instead of ten minutes and thus was required to provide that standard of breaks.