he California Supreme Court issued a ruling holding that employers may not round employee time punches when employees clock in and out for meal periods.
The employer in the case had a policy of rounding time punches to the nearest 10-minute increment. This resulted in some meal periods being rounded up to 30 minutes even though the employee may have taken less than a full, required 30-minute meal period. Although, on the whole, the employer’s rounding policy resulted in more employees being overpaid than underpaid, the court found that with respect to meal period punches, rounding was not permitted. It held that because California requires strict compliance with state meal period requirements, a rounding policy applied to meal periods was prohibited, as it could lead to employees receiving meal periods under 30 minutes. It found that even a seemingly minor infraction, such as an employee receiving a meal period of 28 or 29 minutes, would violate California’s meal period requirements. This, in turn, would obligate an employer to provide impacted employees with missed meal period premium pay.
Compliance Recommendations:
It is now clear that employers in California cannot use rounding policies for employees’ meal punches. The same principle would also apply to rest period punches if employees are recording rest periods. In an effort to help you ensure compliance, if you employ non-exempt employees in California and your ADP time and attendance system was configured to round employee meal or rest punches, we will be disabling this functionality for you. If you have non-ADP time-keeping systems, you should ensure your meal and rest periods are configured to the minute (no rounding).
Please contact your Service Team if you have any questions.