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Friday, June 3, 2011

UPS v. Superior Court: Court Confirms that Plaintiffs Can Recover Two Hours of Pay Per Day for Meal and Rest Violations

In February, the Second District Court of Appeal issued its decision in United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Superior Court (Allen) (2/17/11) --- Cal.App.4th ----, 2011 WL 523633, holding that Labor Code section 226.7 provides for two hours of pay per day when an employee misses both a meal and a rest period. See our blog post here. The Court then granted UPS's petition for rehearing and recently re-issued its decision, confirming its earlier holding. The Court held:
In short, we conclude, based upon the wording of section 226.7, subdivision (b), the IWC's wage orders, the public policy behind the statute and wage orders, and also the principle that we are to construe section 226.7 broadly in favor of protecting employees, that the employees in this case may recover up to two additional hours of pay on a single work day for meal period and rest period violations—one for failure to provide a meal period and another for failure to provide a rest period.
Slip op. at 7.

The new decision is virtually identical to the old, except that it cites three recent decisions supporting its conclusion: Schuyler v. Morton's of Chicago, Inc. (C.D. Cal. Jan. 25, 2011, CV 10–06762 ODW) 2011 U.S.Dist. Lexis 10130, pp. 12–13 and Lara v. Trimac Transp. Servs. (Western) (C.D.Cal. Aug. 6, 2010, CV 10–4280–GHK) 2010 U.S.Dist. Lexis 82420, pp. 10–11 [both following Marlo's conclusion that section 226.7 allows an employee to recover up to two additional hours of pay on a single work day]; Coleman v. Estes Express Lines, Inc. (C.D.Cal.2010) 730 F.Supp.2d 1141, 1148–1149 [concluding class member employees were entitled to “one hour of pay for each work day that the meal period was not provided and also one hour of pay for each work day that the rest period was not provided”].)

The new decision can be cited as United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Superior Court (Allen) (6/2/11) --- Cal.Rptr.3d ----, 2011 WL 2150776. The full opinion is available here.

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