California
California meal break rules for field crews
The hardest state in the country to get right, and the one where getting it wrong is most expensive. California layers daily overtime, double time, a seventh-day premium, meal and rest periods and a split-shift premium on top of the federal weekly rule, and it lets employees enforce most of it themselves.
What the law requires
An unpaid 30-minute meal period for a work period of more than 5 hours, and a second for more than 10 hours.
What it means on a crew
The threshold is exclusive - "more than five hours" - so a shift of exactly 5.0 hours owes nothing. States disagree on this and it is a common source of error; Oregon and Nevada are inclusive.
What Punchless does
The meal is detected from the GPS pattern rather than depending on someone remembering to clock out for lunch, and the thresholds are asserted by test at the boundary. A demonstrated missed, short or late meal is priced at one hour of the regular rate of compensation (Labor Code 226.7) - including the nondiscretionary bonuses you record, as Ferra v. Loews (2021) 11 Cal.5th 858 requires - and carried in the payroll export.
Every rule we enforce is published with the statute behind it and the test that checks it, so this is a claim you can verify rather than take on faith.
A meal eaten on site and never clocked looks the same as one not taken, so it is asked about rather than recorded as a violation. Only a meal the record demonstrates was missed, short or late - or one the worker says they did not get - is priced.
If you are relying on this, ask us before you buy. We would rather lose the sale than have you find out at a hearing.
Other California rules
Verified against primary sources on October 1, 2026. Statutes and wage orders change, and some of this is genuinely unsettled - re-check the source before relying on it. Punchless is not a law firm and this is not legal advice.