Human Resource Blog

Holiday Party Luncheon + Meal Time Pay

We are requiring our employees to attend our holiday party luncheon from 12:30 - 3:00pm at a restaurant. Our regular business hours are 8 am-5pm with 1-hour lunch but we have employees with start times as early as 6:00am. Those with early starts must start lunch by 5th hour. The questions are:

1) In general, must a non-exempt’s lunch start or finish by the 5th hour?
2) As attendance is mandatory, do we need to pay straight time through lunch w/overtime for everyone attending and also a penalty violation of 1 hour of pay at regular rate, even though we are paying emplyees for the remainder of the day (3-5pm)?

Your post does not say which state you are in, and it makes a huge difference. The penalty violation of 1 hour suggests that you may be in California. If so, post another question mentioning that fact, and we will address it seperately.

Even on days when there is an employee holiday party luncheon, employers must follow the law regarding meal breaks. Our recommendation would be to give the employees who start at 6 am a 30-minute to one-hour break at the usual time. The employee can choose whether to eat or not, but working 6.5 hours without a break is enough to make Santa Claus grouchy. That is like an employee who comes to work at 9 am not getting a break until 3:30 pm.

Yes, since attendance at this holiday luncheon is mandatory, you need to pay the employees for it. That means you will need to pay overtime, if these hours put any non-exempt employees over 40 hours in the payroll week, they must be paid overtime.

It sounds like you intend to let employees go directly home from the luncheon at 3 pm, rather than require that they return to work. If this is true, there is no legal obligation in most states for you to pay the employees from 3 pm to 5 pm. But of course your plan is the kinder, more charitable thing to do. However, this does not change your obligation to pay employees while they are at the mandatory holiday luncheon. Paying extra for a time when an employee is not working, does not cancel out the employers responsibility to pay employees when they are working. And a mandatory meeting or luncheon of any type, is working.