It doesn't require you to give your employees meal periods, it requires you to pay your employees for them if they work during them.
Yup, GlyphGryph is right. Look, the problem was that they'd squeeze free labor out of you during lunch breaks, or any breaks and you'd work a 12 hour day minimum. Needless to say, we had a lot of people die from exhaustion or be worn out and fall into the vat of molten steel.... It was sort of problematic.
Moreover, do you realize the specific regulation from CFR you cited is actually in the employer's favor? The whole thing is about how many hours you worked a week as the employee and how to determine that. Well, as long as you give them an actual lunch break and don't force the employee to work on it, then that time doesn't count towards overtime calculation. Otherwise it would and you'd have to pay more overtime as employer. The only catch being you actually have to freaking let them eat and not work, or else it does count.
This stuff has been around since the 1930s. Employers should know it. If they don't then they should really hire a lawyer for their business or something. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
The rule says, "lunch breaks don't count towards hours for overtime, as long as they're real and you don't work during them." <---- This is completely in favor of employer, because otherwise it's more money out of their pocket.
I really think if people understood how regulation and the making of regulation worked, then they could be rather in favor of it and yes, they could actively participate in the making of it, just like large interest groups do. Unfortunately, nobody seems to wanna learn any of this or pay someone who knows.
Finally, there simply will always be regulation, even and especially if you get rid of government regulation. Companies will happily make their own regulations and they will all, absolutely, favor them only, while screwing you over as a rule.
It isn't a question of "have less regulation," that isn't an option no matter who doesn't like it. Rather, it is a question of who makes said regulation, how they make it and who benefits/loses from it.
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In other news:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/impressed-delighted-warren-buffett-matches-204656439.html Finally, for all the talk of not liking the national debt, no one is suggesting the obvious answer: pay some of it down....
Also this:
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/florida-man-guilty-dui-manslaughter-sues-victim-130753893--abc-news.htmlAll you need to know is the
guy's lawyer is also his sister. Yeah, its probably 80% frivolous, but I'm thinking the only reason she's doing this is family desperation. Does that excuse it? No. Does it explain it? Yes. They're different. Moreover, the only possible legit thing about this would be "comparative or contributory negligence." That's like saying I'm 90% at fault for the accident and you're 10% at fault. So, I should only pay you 90% of the damages, due to you being 10% at fault. Even if that does apply here, it shouldn't be a separate lawsuit. It should be raised as a defense to the dead victim's family suing the drunk driver.
I've dome something similar to this where the other person is the car accident was speeding and not wearing their required prescription glasses. My client unquestioningly caused the accident, but the other guy going too fast and not being able to see straight definitely contributed to it.
Summary, the attorney's doing this cause its her brother, she's procedurally wrong, because it's a defense rather than a separate lawsuit. The media has blown this way out of proportion.