Must an employer force employees to take their meal break?

This is the ruling employers most often cite and most often over-read. Brinker did say an employer need not ensure no work is done during a meal period, and that sentence has been carried into a great many handbooks as though it settled the subject.

What the duty actually requires is specific: relieve the employee of all duty, relinquish control over their activities, permit a reasonable opportunity to take an uninterrupted 30 minutes, and not impede or discourage them from doing so. An employee who is genuinely free and chooses to keep working has not created a violation.

The court was equally clear about the other half, and it is the half that decides cases. An employer may not undermine a formal policy by pressure or scheduling — a policy that says take your break, applied to a shift staffed so thinly that taking one is impossible, provides nothing.

The evidentiary consequence is where most employers get caught. Where the records show a short, late or missing meal period, that raises the question the employer then has to answer. "Provide, not ensure" is a defence about what you had to do; it is not a substitute for records showing you did it.