Workforce Bulletin

In Naylor v. Securiguard, Inc., the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an employer may be required to compensate employees for meal breaks if the employees are required to spend a significant portion of that period traveling to a required break area.

Facts

Securiguard employees guarded several gates to a Naval air station.  During their shifts, the guards received two scheduled thirty-minute meal breaks.  The guards expressed a desire to eat at their posts, but Securiguard prohibited them from doing so (out of concern that the customer would think they were shirking their ...