Missed Breaks Don’t Require Additional Pay, Oregon Supreme Court Says

By Anne Saker, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

May 16–Employees who work through rest periods or meal breaks may not file claims for additional wages, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled Thursday in rejecting a class-action case filed by Legacy Health System workers.

“An employee who works four hours and takes a 10-minute rest break within that four-hour period ‘works’ the same amount of time (for wage-and-hour purposes) as an employee who works four hours and does not take a rest break,” the court ruled. “In each circumstance, the employee is entitled to four hours’ pay and no more.”

The opinion came in response to a 2004 case filed in Multnomah County by two Legacy workers, Elizabeth Gafur and Linda Wang. They argued that their work was so demanding that they had to skip required rest and meal breaks, and that Legacy should have paid them extra for missing that time off.

Circuit Judge John Wittmayer ruled that Legacy did not have to pay more. The women appealed, and the Court of Appeals agreed last year with Wittmayer on the meal breaks but said Legacy should compensate the women for missed rest periods.

The hospital took the case to the state Supreme Court, and a wide array of groups filed friend-of-the-court briefs: the Oregon Restaurant Association, the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, the Portland Business Alliance, the Oregon Business Association, the state Association of Chiefs of Police, the State Sheriffs Association, the Special Districts Association of Oregon, the Association of Oregon Counties and the League of Oregon Cities.

In a unanimous ruling written by Justice W. Michael Gillette and released Thursday, the high court focused on the appellate court’s decision and on the state’s regulations governing rest breaks.

“The Court of Appeals accepted (the workers’) assertion that because (the regulations) entitles employees to rest breaks ‘without deduction from the employee’s pay,’ it necessarily follows that that provision entitles them to four hours’ pay for three hours and 50 minutes of work,” Gillette wrote.

“That conclusion is unwarranted, and . . . we think that the prohibition on deductions from pay cuts the other way. Certainly, nothing in that rule requires additional wages for missed rest breaks.”

The court ruled that the Bureau of Labor and Industries can fine an employer for forcing employees to skip breaks, but the law does not require the employer to pay extra wages.

Portland-based Legacy Health System has 8,500 employees, five metro-area hospitals, a hospice agency, research facility and clinics. Net assets in 2007 were nearly $1.3 billion.

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