New bill eliminating work break rights rings alarm bells
www.newsweek.com
The bill would strip the legal right to a lunch break.

Say goodbye to breaks and lunch when working > 6 hours a day! Kentucky says just let the feds set the rules.

  • FarFarAway@startrek.websiteEnglish
    20·
    9 months ago

    I feel like I spent to much time in the sun today…

    Why is nobody talking about this?

    It would also eliminate the need to pay time and a half overtime on the seventh consecutive day of work for people working at least 40 hours a week,

    Am I missing something here. Do these people get paid overtime if they work 7 days in a row, period, as long as they work 40 hours a week? Or does this mean if you work over 40 hours and 7 days in a row, you do not get your overtime pay for the 7th day, even if that puts you over 40 hours?

    While i understand many people dont work 7 days in a row, I’m unclear as to why eliminating overtime pay, in any capacity, isn’t a bigger part of this story. I understand breaks are important and it’s not right to take that away, for various reasons, but to eliminate any form of overtime pay is also a big WTF. Idk, this isn’t a thing in my state

    And then there’s this:

    The bill, if it becomes law, would require employers to pay workers while they are eating instead of giving them a break.

    Are they supposed to eat their sandwich while working? The break is only as long as the employee is actively eating? If there’s no break, how are they eating, at all?

    Idk. Not like its unusual for me to be dense, but these things really make no sense to me.

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      As to that second point, if it means that the employer has to pay during a lunch break (which is how it should be), then I’m all for it.

      The 8 hrs working plus unpaid lunch way we do it is bullshit.

      • ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 months ago

        Y’all are reading into that too much. We have a similar clause in Texas, which is virtually our only protection in regards to breaks. To simplify: they are saying that if the employee is eating AND working, then you have to pay them. I’m not sure how they are wording it in Kentucky but here it’s along the lines of “you don’t have to give the peasants a break, but if you do and it is unpaid then it is illegal to request that they work”.

        It sounds stupid because they are literally saying “if you don’t pay them they can’t be forced to work”, but I’m really glad that protection is there or guarantee it would be abused even more than it likely already is.

        The practical effect is everyone just gets an unpaid lunch because asking people to work 8 hours with no break is ridiculous.

      • FarFarAway@startrek.websiteEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Yeah i always thought that was stupid. If thats what it means, I wonder if that means it will count towards the 8 hours you actually work? I wonder if companies would want to pay people for the extra hour vs losing an hour of productivity.

        Trading off breaks for going home an hour “early” actually sounds like an interesting proposition for office workers, for people that work outside or in a factory, not so much.

        • Cort@lemmy.world
          4·
          9 months ago

          I think it’s saying: you don’t have to give your employees a lunch break, but if you do you have to pay them while they’re on break. To me it sounds like a way to convince all employers in the state to not give lunch breaks since they have to now pay employees during lunch.